“Uh, that’s a good question. I would have to look at the budget to see what we can approve but I think we're definitely looking at having you spend considerable work time on creating a full pitch, on contacting some of these bloggers, and video bloggers, and small eBook outlets, and the larger authors and smaller publishing houses you were talking about. Get them together to talk about some package advertising deals.”

She stood and smoothed her sweater over the swell of her hips, and where her hands were – all he wanted to do was replace them with his. When she swallowed, he wanted his lips on the pulse at her neck and when she smiled he wanted to taste the way that her lips felt right now.

“Thank you,” she said. Her body leaned forward and then she halted herself, as if she were going to touch him. “Thank you. I appreciate the confidence.” Eyes narrowed as if she had a question she was about to ask, but then thought better of it. Instead, she added, “Can I email you some questions to bang out the specifics?”

That’s not what I want to bang out, he thought. “Absolutely,” he said, his mind warring with his solar plexus, with his thrumming heart, and with hands that were a little too untamed for his needs right now. “Absolutely. We’ll talk.” The words came out choked. He felt a cognitive and emotional dissonance that made it difficult to continue and so he didn’t, instead cutting the conversation off in mid word and walking away to find a stairwell to pound this out.

“I don’t know,” Lydia hissed into her phone, curled up in the supply closet. This was the last place that she wanted to be but it was the only quiet, dark little cubbyhole that she could find anywhere. Her office was teeming with too many people and the bathroom – lord! – the bathroom was gossip central. If somebody heard her in a stall whispering into her phone they’d assume she was pregnant or being cheated on or had some sort of a disease.

So, supply closet it was. The problem was that the room seemed infused with Matt’s scent. The darkness was reminiscent of his hands on her, his mouth claiming her, and the room seemed to get smaller and smaller, shrinking to envelop her and take her over even as Krysta screeched, “What do you think is happening, Lyd? Do you think he’s trying to screw you over?”

I think he’s trying to screw me, she thought, then took a deep, careful breath before answering with her actual mouth. “Umm...I don’t know. The idealist in me wants to think that he recognized a good idea, that he respects my intelligence, and that he wants me to explore this option to see if we can get the higher ups to sign off on it, and this is my ticket to becoming a director.”

“And the pessimist in you,” Krysta answered for her, “says that he just wants to get into your pants, steal your idea, take credit, and run away.”

“Pretty much,” Lydia said.

And then Krysta said the words that no one really wanted to hear, including Krysta. “Just like Dave did.”

Ouch. What Matt didn’t know was that Dave had come to the company years ago as a fresh- faced, just as unctuous and oily, upstart. In a position that was then called Communications Coordinator, and that he quickly got renamed and reclassified to Director of Communications.

Dave hadn’t worn his wedding ring when he had first started at Bounrham Industries. It wasn’t until after he and Lydia had gone out a few times, always to quiet, dark little places that were twenty blocks away from work, that he just had to share with her – these little gems deep in the city, far from prying eyes.

It wasn’t until she had come perilously close to giving herself to him, not so much emotionally but physically, that she had found out he was married.

That had ended it immediately. She wouldn’t aid anyone in cheating on their spouse, and even though she wasn’t in a committed relationship that didn’t mean that he was not. He seemed to have no problem, however, with violating his vows. When she’d called him on it he had simply smiled, looked at his fingernails, paused, bought himself a little bit of time and then said, “You’re really not my type anyhow.”

Lydia had spent the last year working under his thumb, fetching his damn lattes and trying to find a way to get a transfer out of there. The romance project had been a big part of that. With Dave gone, though, she had more options. Having Krysta bring up the past with Dave, though, made her cringe. Suddenly Matt’s scent flew out from under the small crack in the door, the tiny closet becoming a great, cold, white light abyss and all traces of intimacy in memory or in real life faded at her sense of outrage and shame.

Shame driven only by her own naivete. How she had let herself fall for so many different lines and for such a jerk like Dave was something that she just couldn’t understand and really couldn’t forgive herself for. But, she wasn’t going to focus on that right now and Krysta wasn’t going to make her.

“So,” she whispered, “the good news is that I’ve got another opportunity.”

“But Lyd, Matt has your job.”

“Yeah, but you know what? I bet Matt is gunning for Dave’s job and then I can have Matt’s job.”

“Matt’s been here a week Lydia – a week. You’ve been here for over two years. Why can’t you have Dave’s job?”

She went silent. How could she have – and then slowly Lydia began to bang her head against the metal shelving in front of her. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! How could she have missed it? Some part of her had become submissive, schoolgirl-like, giddy at scraps. And Matt Jones had been some sort of integral part of that.

“You’re right,” she told Krysta.

“I know.”

“And you’re modest.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“I need to go for the director’s job, which means Matt is no longer an ally. He’s the competition.”

“Mike, it’s Diane just calling to check in and see how you’re doing. You’ve been on my mind lately and I’ve been thinking a lot about you. Call me. You know where to find me.” Click.

He’d ignored the last three text messages from her and now she had resorted to voice mail. She must have some enormous event where she needed him on her arm. Why had he ever played this game?

Joanie had delivered about twenty-seven hours worth of work to his apartment and here he sat, on a Sunday, when most of his co-workers – no, Matt Jones’ co-workers – were catching up on errands or playing, going to the movies, hanging out with family.

Bleary eyed, already on his fourth cup of coffee and it was, he looked at the clock, 10:11 a.m. – he faced a day of dull work.

Diane. Just what he needed. Diane was a Kardashian wannabe, which Mike had found charming when he first met her. Not charming in a cute or an appealing sort of way, but charming in a ‘pat the woman's head in a condescending manner’ kind of way because if being a Kardashian were the height of Diane’s dreams then he’d hate to know what her nightmares were. As tux candy, she'd been fine, but just as she used him for status, he had used her for public relations.

As he stared at all of the work and all of the decisions that other people were afraid to make, choices that he was pushed against a wall to execute, he faced a growing sense that profits were not going to meet what he had hoped in order to achieve his coup. He felt himself simultaneously tightening and loosening, the drive to win so great, so overwhelming inside of him that he could not let go of the goal.

Something new, a release within him, was a counterweight to that burden of success.

It teased him like a Siren on the seas, calling out to him, offering a different view, another life. One with swells and soft curves and flesh that went on and invited his hands, his mouth, his heart. And that, right there, was the problem.

She was derailing him.

From that frantic kiss in the supply closet to a very unprofessional but succulent moment in the dark, in the elevator, Lydia invaded his thoughts, his fantasies – and his business.

To that night in the bar, taking her home, tucking her in, his decency the only protection from tipping over and going full on, full blood, full wild with her.

A less respectful man would have gone for it. A man with a killer instinct would have gone for it and, until a couple of weeks ago, Mike would have called himself the ultimate alpha male with a killer instinct that put would put him into the Fortune 500 and would eventually make him the CEO of a top-ten company.

Her panties were now tucked away in his glove compartment, never failing to bring a smile to his face whenever he saw them. Damn it.

Decency threatened everything. The decency that said Bournham Industries bonuses weren’t good enough. The decency that saw the impact of cheap paper towels and horrible coffee on the workers. The decency that kept his body from hers, from taking advantage of someone who was so dependent on him but didn’t realize it – her career, her self esteem, her emotional state so wrapped up in what she did at Bournham Industries and her personal state so wrapped up in this fictional character Matt Jones, that he had created. So much of Lydia intertwined with him.

And she was completely oblivious to it all and certainly had been with more alcohol coursing through her than ought to have been the case. It was her vulnerability that made him realize he had to withdraw. Yet he had to get back in touch with that killer instinct, because that killer instinct – that was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

He’d agreed to do Meet the Hidden Boss with Jonah because his killer instinct drove him to find ways to make new profits. His killer instinct drove him to date women like Diane because it got him on the socialite pages, into the newspapers, on social media sites, on TMZ and Perez and all the crazy places with his face here, there, and everywhere. Branding was something that guys with a killer instinct knew.

Decency? Decency had no place when it came to branding.

What he needed to do was go back to being that guy who tapped on her glass, who met her that first day, that guy she joked – or didn’t joke – was trying to be Christian Grey. Mike might not have been a billionaire yet, but he was going to be.

Lydia was the only thing standing in the way.

The script was already sitting on his desk before he’d had a chance to take off his coat. The smack of the thick packet of papers hitting the surface as he whirled around to find Jonah standing there, back against the wall, trying hard not to be noticed filled the air.

In a twelve-by-fifteen office, it wasn’t easy to hide.

“Hey there, Mike. Good morning. I thought I’d catch you kind of early.” His hands out in a gesture of supplication, Jonah clearly had an agenda but was trying to act like he didn’t.

“What do you want Jonah? I don’t have a lot of time and you really shouldn’t be coming in here.”

Jonah looked at his watch. “It’s 7:30, none of the other doo-bies are going to be in and they don’t know who I am. I’ll just leave out the staircase and avoid the..” he paused for drama, or so it seemed to Mike. “...elevators.” A hard, wry look that made Mike stand on alert.

“You shouldn’t have to worry. The elevators don’t have cameras. Isn’t that right, Jonah?” Hard look back.