The Two Week Arrangement (Penthouse Affair, #1) novel Chapter 15

Dominic

I thought dinner with Presley would be manageable, that spending more time with her would somehow numb me to her presence. I hoped coming into work on Monday would be normal and uneventful. Maybe my exhaustion from a weekend with the girls would be enough to keep me tethered to reality.

I thought wrong.

It’s like all my senses are on cocaine. Everything is magnified around Presley. The smell of her wafting around me as we made our way toward my office. The sound of her heels on the floor, poking tiny holes into my façade of professionalism. Her slight frame keeps pace with mine from the corner of my eye.

When I first asked her to talk in my office, she froze. But then a soft blush bloomed on her cheeks, and her eyelashes fluttered with a short blink. Was she embarrassed? Nervous?

Regardless, that has to be my favorite of her expressions.

“Of course,” she said. I can still hear her voice bouncing needlessly around my head, though nearly half a minute has passed since we stepped into my office and I shut the door.

“About last Friday night . . .”

Presley’s lower lip trembles, and her wide blue eyes latch onto mine.

Or maybe that’s my favorite.

She’s so determined, so earnest, even when everything’s about to change between us.

“I think we should talk,” I say.

Presley nods, her gaze moving past me to examine my space. Although she’s been in my office before, I suppose this is the first chance she’s had to really take it in. I kept her pretty preoccupied with assignments her first week, and she tackled them like a pro.

She touches the edge of a frame on the wall that holds an award Aspen Hotels collected the year I began as CEO. She always has this inquisitive look on her face, as if she’ll learn everything about me just by scanning the contents of my desk and walls.

“I really do like your office,” she says softly, almost to herself.

I pause, letting the silence stretch on. “Thank you.”

The space is old-fashioned, but humble. I keep everything in order. While my apartment is littered with chewed-up crayons and miscellaneous toys, not a single thing is out of place here at work.

What’s strange is how well she fits in here. Her dark wool skirt and white button-up complement her sharp heels. She’s a picture of classic and modern in one petite, hotter-than-hell body. The way she stands in my office, one hand on her hip . . . she looks like she could be running this place herself.

Shit, that’s hot.

I try not to acknowledge the way everything below my belt perks up at that thought.

Not fucking now.

“Please, sit,” I say, gesturing to the wingback chair that Ollie so often lounges in.