Breaking All Her Rules

That would be the ultimate irony. He finally got his penis to sit up and pay attention. If he immediately mortally wounded it with a zipper he would just have to tell life to go screw itself.

He heard a light knock on the door and he went out into the living area. He walked to the door and opened it. It really was her. All five-foot-nothing of her. Dark hair still pulled back in that little bun pinned primly at the nape of her neck. Her cheeks a pale pink, a streak of blush paint over porcelain skin. Her almond-shaped eyes were deep brown, nearly black, framed with lush dark lashes.

She was perfection. And he hadn’t even gotten to her figure, which, though petite, packed the kind of punch that...well, that had made him lust again.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

She looked him over, from his face down to his bare chest, to his jeans, which were barely hanging onto his hips, and the color in her cheeks deepened.

“Your phone,” she said, holding a delicate hand out.

“What?”

“This is your phone,” she said.

“Come in.” She looked to the left, then the right. “What, are you afraid entering my hotel room is felony or something?”

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“We shared a cab.”

“An act I don’t even commit with the closest of acquaintances. I guess I don’t have to worry about you kidnapping me and making a pair of underwear out of my hair.”

“That is completely disgusting. Also, something Pato might do.”

“Pato?”

“He’s a...modern artist.”

She raised her brows. “Okay.”

“Coming in?”

“Sure,” she said, stepping grandly over the threshold. “Now where is my phone?”

“It’s on my bed. I haven’t touched it since I got out of the cab. I’m not in the mood to deal with...well, anything. And I can order fried chicken and pornography from the comfort of my own bed so...”

“Charming.”

“I’m not trying to be,” he said. Except he sort of wished he could be. So that he could...seduce her, maybe. But he was pretty sure he’d forgotten how to seduce a woman.

Like schmoozing at gallery openings, maybe?

Well, that he could do. For very short periods of time. Because Marsha had threatened to get a shock collar for him if he didn’t learn to mind his manners.

“Clearly. Phone?”

“On my bed.” He started walking back toward the bedroom, then stopped. “How did you know where I was staying?”

“I tracked my phone.”

“Damn, you can do that with these?”

“It’s an app. It’s really simple. I can...show you or...or not. I have to...I don’t have anywhere to be.”

“Why is that?” he asked, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Because my boss the...jerk...relieved me of the only client I had left in the day after tearing me a new one because of a client complaining about me. Never mind said client was only complaining because I did not flutter my lashes at him when he made it clear he wanted to get into my pencil skirt.”

“What?”

“The client I was meeting with, right before I got in the cab. He made a pass at me, I politely rebuffed him. He called my boss because I am, apparently, cold and unfriendly. My boss doesn’t care about my side of things. He only cares that I pissed off a client and I am now being punished for not offering a side of sex with my financial advice.”

“He can’t do that,” Zack said. “Your boss.”

“Sure he can, because it’s the client’s word against mine. Because all he has to know is that I dissatisfied a client and the what and why don’t matter.”

“Did you tell him that the guy was being a douche?”

She bit her lip. “Not as such.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means no.”

“Well, why the hell not?”

“Because!” she said. “It’s hard to be a woman in this business. And people treat you like...like you’re there for them, and if you dare complain you’re humorless and mean. And if you call them on their crap you’re shrill. And if you say someone hit on you and it creeped you out they say you’re imagining things, and making mountains out of molehills and I’ve watched, for the past eight years, people being driven out of the more high-profile offices, because it gets to be too much. So I just figured if I worked harder, if I did the right things, I would be rewarded for it, but now I’m in trouble because some guy...I just...it’s not supposed to be like this.”

“No. It’s not,” he said. And all this made him feel like an ass because he’d been about to...thinking about her. And she’d been objectified enough today.

Naturally, he couldn’t just have a simple fantasy. No. That would have been too damn kind of life. Life just didn’t do kind for him.

Kind of a funny thought, up in a suite that overlooked Central Park, but hey, there were more important things in life than a room with a view.

He’d rather go back to living poor, on a ranch in Pine Ridge Falls, with the people he loved most, than be here alone. But that was another lifetime. Another man. He wasn’t even going to think about it.

“Then why is it?” she asked.

“Hell if I know. Life never seems to be the way it’s supposed to be,” he said. “All you can do is enjoy the little things. Which is why I was thinking porn and chicken.”

“I have no little things I enjoy,” she said. “I enjoy nothing. And I think I hate everything.” She was breathing hard, her eyes wide.

“Everything?”

“I don’t even have a life. I don’t even think I have any friends left. I work at this job, and I go back to my apartment and order takeout and I watch DVR’d TV shows. I don’t date I don’t...I don’t...” Her eyes clashed with his, a hard sock of heat hitting his gut.

“What else?” he asked.