IN BED WITH THE BOSS

Sinking heavily back onto the bed, her fuzzy brain listed: San Francisco, A formal evening dress, an overnight bag or maybe a weekend or an entire week bag. Be ready to go by one o’clock…

Then she was suddenly lurching into panic mode and using her phone to call Megan.

“Megan, you have to talk to Louis for me” she wrung out urgently.

“Louis?” Megan repeated. “Oh, my…what’s wrong”

“Nothing… I mean… I gotta quit my job at the cheesecake shop. I’d call him myself but I don’t think there’s time. It’s also not fair to him to keep on missing my shifts so I have to quit” Vivian said, already feeling the chill of alarm skate down her spine. “I’ll send him a message later and call him, but for now, I’m going to San Francisco….”

“San Fran… what? Why?” Megan stammered.

“Work” Vivian replied simply.

“Oh, is Scott McCall taking you there?”

“Yes”

“Oh wow. That’s nice. I’m sure Louis will understand. That is so cool… Take a brave pill before you go, sweetie,” her best friend advised her. “Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s going to be huge.”

“Huge…” Vivian whispered, grappling with the complicated idiosyncrasies of the English language when spoken with sarcasm like this. “You will have to explain what you mean”

“Come on…Do I have to tell you everything? Look, I’m not tryna make you nervous. Have fun. You’ll tell me about your trip when you get back.”

Knowing that there was no time to continue the conversation, Vivian said goodbye to Megan and hung up. At one o’clock to the absolute second, Vivian was ready with her travel bag as per instructions, and the dress she had decided to wear this evening draped over her arm in a cream silk dress bag.

She was wearing faded designer denims, a thigh-hugging black T-shirt and fiercely high black designer shoes. She’d confined her hair loosely to her nape with a big shiny black clip and her make-up was light. For casual, cool and in strict control of her emotions were the absolute keys to her standing at all. Indeed she’d been a breath away from using the flu bug excuse right up until the moment she’d stepped out of her bedroom door.

She heard a car arrive and her heart gave a single heavy little thump as she hurried out of her apartment and locked her front door. Scott stepped out. He was dressed more casually than she’d ever seen him, in pale chinos and a gray V-neck sweater worn over a pale blue-and-gray-checked shirt. Big, lean, dark and classy, Vivian observed , and had to bite back a bitter grimace when her head gave her another image of him, dressed in a black dinner suit leaving a famous nightclub with a leggy blonde clinging like a blood-sucking limpet to his side.

He walked over to her when she began to move forward and their eyes met for a second. Her throat felt so thick Vivian found she needed to swallow but wouldn’t allow herself the relief. Their murmured greetings crossed over each other. She was the one to break eye contact, lowering her eyelashes and feeling like the ice woman inside.

“Here, let me take your bag…” he said. As he stooped to lift her canvas holdall from where it sat at her feet, Vivian found herself staring at the top of his head where the black silky thickness of his hair was glossed by the hint of curls. Whatever woman he’d been with had no doubt enjoyed running her long limpet fingers through last night, Vivian tormented herself with the image she’d evoked.

“Do you want me to take your dress bag…?”

“No-thank you,” she managed politely.

Determined to maintain a professional detachment if it killed her to do it, Vivian walked to his car with her chin tilted down so she did not have to look at him. As far as she was concerned, she had to acknowledge that it was time for her to learn to get over him, and if that meant not looking at him, then she was not going to look at him.

“Is something wrong?” his deep voice drawled when she remained quiet.

“Nothing,” she responded.

“If you’re worrying about tonight, then-”

“I am not worrying about anything.” She replied before he could say anything else. It was only as he forged ahead of her to open the door that she noticed he carried no bag for himself.

Presuming he must have already put it in his car, Vivian walked past him…only to go still when she noticed that it was a brand-new shiny red sports car-something that she should have noticed since if she hadn’t been so focused on him-waiting in the place of the one she was used to seeing him with.

Her icy cool faltered. “Y-you changed your car.” she said.

He shrugged. “Yeah” he relayed drily.

As Vivian walked up to the door he was holding open for her she caught a gleam in his eyes which told her he was waiting for her to make some kind of positive response because he had gone to this much trouble exclusively for her.

When she said nothing, he grimaced. “You can thank me later,” he murmured, “once you’ve recovered from your sulk because I spoiled your plans for today.”

It took Vivian a minute to grasp that he was referring to her plans to meet with Betty. She had mentioned it during their ‘date’ when she’d been drunk and talked way too much. They’d planned to go shopping and take in a movie but Scott had not given her a chance to tell him that during his phone call this morning. Opening her mouth to tell him, she snapped it shut again. Let him think what the heck he liked. What she did with her free time was none of his business-as his was not any of hers.

“Seat belt,” he issued as he climbed in next to her, and the pleasant tone had disappeared from his voice, Vivian noticed.

She tried not to watch the way he controlled his new car as if he had been driving it for years. It must be in his blood to know instinctively what to do in any given situation. She’d seen him at work too often not to be impressed with the way he could control most things with an ease that was so breathtakingly natural even those he was controlling did not notice he was doing it.

It was no wonder he was arrogant sometimes, a bit of a bully when he felt he needed to be. Incisive, decisive, he was used to being right so why not expect other people to just fall in line to his bidding?

After attempting to kick-start several conversation subjects to which she replied in crushing monotones, he issued a driven sigh. “Quit the chilly sulk, Vivian” he told her, “Or I swear I will turn this car around and take you back home again.”

Vivian straightened in her seat. “I am not sulking.” she said.

“No?” Stopping at a set of traffic lights he turned to look at her-deep dark eyes, feathered with flashes of glinting gold, spun nerve ends alive across her taut profile. “You remind me of a feral cat I once tried to befriend as a kid.

One minute she was soft and coquettish and brushing her sleek body up against me, the next minute she had her claws in my neck and was spitting at me.”Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org exclusive © material.

“I have never brushed up against you!” she denied, then felt her cheeks flame when she recalled the way she’d moved towards him and kissed him last night. “Nor have I drawn my claws,” she added as a quick cover-up. “And if I remind you of your friend the feral cat, then you remind me of our dog,” she threw back, sparked into defending herself.

“Your-what?” he raked out.

“Dany, our dog” she supplied. “One minute he was beautifully relaxed and amenable, the next he acted as if he didn’t occupy the same planet as everyone else.”

You’re accusing me of being moody?’ Scott delivered across the gap separating them.

Vivian fixed her gaze on the traffic lights. “I cannot predict how you are going to speak to me from one minute to another. Dany was the same. Only he did not speak-he just gave the evil eye to say I don’t feel like being nice to you any longer, and so he wasn’t.” She added a self-explanatory shrug. “The lights have changed color,” she pointed out.

“A dog,” he breathed, steering the car into a right turn, then accelerating up the street. “Thanks, Vivian” he said with grim sarcasm, and swung the car off the street into a small car park by the banks of the river, killed the car engine and climbed out.

Vivian hugged a pleased smile to herself as she watched him stride around the car bonnet with his golden good looks pronounced by the savage look on his face.

So she’d just insulted him and ruined his day. Good, she thought, because he had ruined hers too! Did she have the right to be angry about that? She did not care if she had no right-she just did!