I want You Deeper

Title: Wedded To The Billionaire

Charlie McLaughlin set down her mug of coffee and cup of yogurt, grabbing a tissue from the box so she wouldn’t have to rest her spoon directly on her desk. She’d wiped the desk down the day before, but she still felt better if her eating utensils were on top of something.

With a sigh, she sat down in her desk chair and smiled. This was her favorite time of day. This half hour before everyone else arrived when she got a head start on her day. Her boss, Justin, teased her about getting to work early, but she just preferred the silence of the empty office.

Charlie was reaching for her mouse, intending to scoot it to wake up her computer, when an unexpected noise shattered that prized silence. It sounded like… A knock?

After waiting a second for it to repeat, she decided to ignore it. If someone was at the door, they could wait until official office hours. She wasn’t a receptionist. But then she remembered that the building had security, so anyone who came to the door was likely okay to be here.

There it was again. A knock. Charlie looked down at her yogurt regretfully. She’d have to delay her breakfast just a little longer. Sighing, she stood and walked in the direction of the lobby area. She had to get a little closer to turn the corner so she could see the front door. Since all the walls around here were pretty much glass, she could immediately see who was standing out there.

A man. A tall, dark, and handsome man, as cheesy as it sounded. He looked like he’d just stepped out of a catalog with his perfectly tailored suit jacket and button-down shirt. Like everyone else in Silicon Valley, though, he wore jeans. You had to dress down at least a little to fit the culture.

Charlie walked to the door and stopped. “May I help you?”

His face scrunched up. He shook his head and pointed to his ear. He was saying he couldn’t hear her?

She’d worked at TravTech for four years, three months, and ten days. But who was counting? In that time, she’d never tried to talk to someone through the glass door that led to her office space. She’d just assumed you could hear through it. Certainly, when she’d had her own office with a door -before downsizing had her voluntarily give it to her boss-she’d been able to hear people talking outside. Maybe this door was thicker.

Charlie weighed her options. She could turn and go back to her desk and hope the guy went away. She could go get a notepad and write down a phone number for him to call, then speak to him that way. Or she could simply open the door and hope this guy wasn’t a well-dressed serial killer.

Gritting her teeth, she reached out and pulled the door open. The security device made a loud click in response, as it always did when it opened. She pulled the door only partway open, though-mostly because she wanted to make it clear that he needed to say what he wanted and be on his way. She didn’t have time to chitchat with strangers.

“May I help you?” Charlie asked.

The guy’s neutral expression changed to an amused one. Amused. As though he thought she was cute or something.

“Charlene McLaughlin,” he said.

Charlie frowned. Nobody called her Charlene. Well, her mother had called her that when she was a kid and did something wrong. She’d also add in Charlie’s middle name. “Charlene Michelle McLaughlin,” her mom would shriek. “Get over here right now!”

“Charlie,” she corrected. Then she wondered why she’d bothered to correct him. “How do you know my name?”

“May I come in?”

Seriously? This guy had some nerve.

“No. Our office doesn’t open until eight o’clock. There’s a cafe in the lobby if you’d like to wait. They have great lattes.”

Again, why was she saying all this? “No” was a full sentence. That was what she’d been learning from an audiobook on female empowerment she was reading.

“I’m Nicholas Shaw,” he announced like it meant something. Just dropped the two words and took a step back, sliding one hand into his back pocket. The stance emphasized his broad shoulders. He was tall and thin, but his arms and chest looked like he could make a woman feel safe just by wrapping her in a hug.

Charlie shook her head as if to clear the clutter out of it. She could blame it on the early hour, but she was already on her second cup of coffee. This was when she was usually at her best.

“I have no idea who Nicholas Shaw is.” Charlie stepped back, preparing to close the door. She decided it would be rude to at least not say something. “As I said, we open at eight. Come back then.”

“Justin is expecting me,” he called out as the door swung toward him.

Charlie had let go of it, just letting it sail toward the closed position. His words had her rushing to grab the handle to pull it back open again.

She squinted at him. “What did you say?”

“We went to college together. Lived in the dorms, then an apartment.

Had some wild times. I’m here to see Justin.”

Charlie’s stomach flip-flopped. “You’re Nicky,” she said. “Yes. He’s mentioned you a few times.”

Try a few thousand times. She’d been rude to Nicky. This was not good.

But Nicholas laughed. “That’s an old nickname. Justin loves to call me that. I don’t even like Nick.”

“Come in.” Charlie stepped back, letting the guy waltz right into the office. She felt a stab of disappointment that her morning solitude had just been completely snatched from her. Even if she could find a place in the office for this guy to wait quietly, it wouldn’t be the same. The biggest part of enjoying being here alone was, well, being here alone.

“Nice digs.” Nicholas had stepped around her and was turning in circles, taking in the big, open space around him. They’d crammed most of the staff in here after the layoffs, but so many people worked from home now, there was usually only a sprinkling of workers throughout the day.

“Thanks,” she said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Sure. Just show me where it is. I can take it from there.”

Charlie started toward the break room, feeling odd about walking in front of him. Was he assessing her backside? Why did she feel so selfconscious about it? Before the layoffs, she’d headed up the entire human resources team-well, it had only consisted of two people, but it still took a lot of confidence to manage people. She remained the person everyone came to when they needed hiring help or wanted to update their retirement plans.

Surely, she could handle walking her boss’s college roommate to the break room without her knees getting all wobbly. She took a deep breath. Deep breaths helped with pretty much everything, she’d found.

“You’re the go-to person around here, I hear,” Nicholas commented as they entered the break room. “Justin has said great things about you.”

Charlie turned to look at him. “I’m the go-to person when it comes to HR. Brooke handles marketing, plus the app development team-that’s the core of operations. We’ve been pretty shorthanded since the downsizing, I’m sure you know.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have brought that up. Had Justin mentioned the downsizing to his friend? What if he wanted to keep negative sorts of things from his buddy?

And why was he talking about Charlie to outside people? It made no sense. She handled payroll and kept things running around here. She’d even become a type of office manager and sometimes assistant since Justin had to fire his own trusted assistant during the layoffs. So, she supposed “go-to person” was a good description of her role here, but it just seemed strange her boss would talk about it to his college roommate.

“There’s the coffee.” She pointed toward the one-cup coffeemaker she’d talked Justin into buying when business was thriving. “Do you know how to work it?”

There it was again. That smile of amusement. It was the way he’d looked at her when she answered the door. She didn’t like men looking at her like she was so adorable. It annoyed her to no end.

“I think I can manage it. So, tell me a little about yourself.” Somehow, he managed to sound like a therapist as he made that request. While he waited for her response, he stepped over to the coffeemaker and examined the selection of coffee pods in the holder.

“I’ve been the HR person here for four years.” She stepped back a little, edging closer to the door. The plan was to make a hasty exit as soon as it felt natural. “It’s the only job I’ve ever had.”

Pod poised above the slot in the machine, he turned to look at her, his eyebrows raised. She quickly reviewed what she’d just said. Yeah, that probably did sound a little odd.

“I babysat as a teenager,” Charlie rushed to add. “There was this family down the street who paid me every summer to watch their kids. Then they’d go on vacation and I just stayed in the house to take care of the dogs. I kept that job through high school, so I never had to work in a restaurant or store. But caring for kids is hard work.”

She felt like she was blabbering. She probably was. She needed to just say a closing statement and get the heck out of there.

“Justin said you’ve had your work cut out for you since the downsizing.” Nicholas turned to the machine and dropped the pod in, closed the lid, and pressed the button for the strongest cup. “I imagine keeping morale up after something like that is a challenge.”

Charlie closed her eyes and nodded, letting out a big breath. “Yes. It is.”

Her days had been filled with meeting requests from random staff members who didn’t reveal what they wanted until they were behind closed doors. It was almost always concerns related to the layoffs. Questions about raises, worries about retirement plans-all the while secretly trying to get information out of her about possible future cutbacks.

Surprise meetings were not Charlie’s thing. But easing the concerns of the remaining staff members was definitely not her thing.

“You do seem like you’d be a calming influence,” Nicholas said, turning to face her while his coffee dropped into the cup in a steady stream. “I guess that’s an important personality trait in an HR person.”

Great. That again. Charlie had been told that all her life. She had a soft voice and a calm, relaxed demeanor that made people assume she meditated all the time. She’d never meditated. She just looked calm. She didn’t feel that way inside.

“It comes in handy.” She took another step toward the door. “Well, I have to prepare for a meeting this morning. Just pick a desk anywhere out there if you’d like to wait. We do hot-desking here, so most of the employees sit where they want.”

“Where do you sit?”

“I have a desk in the back, near one of the smaller conference rooms.”

Why she was explaining this, she had no idea. “HR people have a lot of meetings and…privacy issues.”

Coffee cup in hand, he turned to look at her, eyeing her over the top of it as he took the first sip. “I imagine.”

She felt the need to add more but resisted. For some reason, it seemed like he was inferring from what she’d said that she was the one with privacy issues. There was no reason to think that whatsoever, aside from the fact that it was true.

This man was infuriating. He was not only the most handsome man she’d seen in a while, but he seemed to be able to see right through the facade she’d so carefully crafted. Having someone around who could do that could be dangerous.

Luckily, he wouldn’t be in her life much longer.