The Garrisons: Parker, Brittany & Stephen: The CEO's Scandalous Affair

The only thing she’d ever wanted out of this job, this city and this life was anonymity and peace. No attention—from men or media. No connection—with her boss or his associates. No trouble—ever. And what had just happened in that bathroom spelled attention, connection and trouble in capital red letters.

She recorded the rest of the messages on a call sheet that she delivered to him hourly, only slightly reassured by the fact that whatever was going wrong in Parker’s world, it would divert his attention from her.

Her intercom buzzed.

“Yes, Mr. Garrison?”

“I need you.”

Her gut clenched. “I’ll be right there, Mr. Garrison.”

“I think, Anna—” his voice in the receiver was just soft enough to make her tighten her grasp and push the phone closer to her ear “—you could probably call me Parker now.”

Now that I’ve seen you in your underwear. Her heart wobbled. “Absolutely, Mr…. Parker.”

He was still chuckling when she hung up.

“Come on, Anna,” she whispered to herself, gathering her planner and pen. Parker didn’t strike her as the kind of man to torture and tease a woman, or one who would assume that just because he’d seen her in the almost altogether that he could have his way with her.

She stood, surprised at how shaky that thought made her legs. Have his way with her.

A stupid, archaic phrase that sent even stupider, more archaic pulses down her body. So they’d had an awkward moment.

She rolled her eyes at the understatement. A really awkward moment. And so what if she’d seen a lusty side of a man she found attractive? Okay, gorgeous. All right, hot as sin.

She was still a top-notch administrative assistant who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that office affairs were for fools who liked to job hop. And he was a very important, busy man who had an electronic black book with the name and private cell phone number of every available model, debutante and businesswoman in Miami-Dade County.

She was still an employee, and he was still the boss. Period. End of fantasy.

She tapped on his door, opening it as she did. She’d always done that, but this morning, the intrusion felt more intimate. He stood at the window, the cordless phone held to his ear, his attention on the postcard view of Biscayne Bay. Through a floor-to-ceiling window, sunlight glinted off blue-violet waves, polka-dotted with pleasure craft and cruise ships, fringed by emerald palm trees and the pastel high-rises of Miami Beach on the horizon.

But the real view was inside and, as always, Anna stole an eyeful.

Parker had removed his jacket, revealing the tailored cut of a snow-white zillion-thread-count designer shirt pulled just taut enough to hint at the toned, developed muscles underneath. The shirt was tucked neatly into dark trousers, custom-made to fit like a dream over one drool-inducing backside.

The man was a god.

He turned from the window and she averted her eyes before getting caught worshipping at the altar of his backside.

“Can the legal crap, Brandon,” he said into the phone, sliding one of his hands through closely cropped, thick black hair. “I don’t care what the DNA test results will say. Can we or can we not contest this will?”

DNA? Contest the will? Anna frowned, but Parker just nodded to one of the guest chairs in front of his desk, issuing an unspoken invitation for her to sit. As always, he seemed utterly calm, the aura of authority that shimmered around him neatly in place. But there was something different in that clipped voice, and in the tense way he held his broad shoulders. His control was tied on with a tenuous thread today.

“Fine, you do that,” he said, leaning his head to one side to work out a crick. “In the meantime, it’s business as usual. My business.” He glanced at Anna, who made a show of flipping her planner to the next clean page so she didn’t stare. Even though she’d become quite adept at avoiding detection.

“Oh, damn it all, I completely forgot.” His tone changed with the admission, and she instantly sat up, prepared to help him remember what he forgot. That was, after all, her job. Not ogling his perfectly shaped butt, impossibly wide shoulders or Adonis-like chest. Parker-gazing was just a side benefit.

“I can’t go,” he said to Brandon, sliding into the high-backed desk chair and reaching for his little black digital device and pressing a few buttons. “But, with the bomb you just dropped at this morning’s reading, I think I need to be there more than ever.”

He paused and Anna tried to psych out what he was talking about.

“But I’m way too swamped to consider going that far away,” he added, “unless I charter a jet.”

Of course. London.

“I have a ton of work to do this weekend,” he continued, “and it’s impossible to get anything done on a commercial flight.”

Anna slipped a creamy-white card embossed with silver letters from the “pending” section of his calendar. Her fingers glided over the imprint of the International Hotel and Restaurant Association seal, over the gilded script inviting him to the annual ball at Guildhall in London. She’d been meaning to get a response from him so she could RSVP.

He chuckled softly, fiddling with the buttons on the PDA as he tucked the phone into one of those impressive shoulders.

“Yes. A date,” he said casually to Brandon, and shot a lazy wink at Anna, which sent an involuntary stutter to her heart. “I suppose I’d need to get one of those, too.”

Which of the lucky ladies would win that lottery?

Maxine, whose daddy owned half of Palm Beach? Or the nine-foot glamazon who’d been on the cover of Vogue twice? He’d been seeing a lot of her in the past few weeks. Maybe he’d go for that spunky redhead who owned the PR agency that had done some work for Garrison, Inc. last month. Sparks were certainly crackling in the conference room when that one came in for a meeting.

“As a matter of fact, I might have the perfect person.” His gaze landed right on her, intense, relentless and unwavering. Exactly the way it had been when he’d devoured her with it in the bathroom.

A low, slow flame curled up her belly and started a familiar bonfire. One she’d become very good at dousing with four simple words that have saved legions of love-struck secretaries: He’s your boss, dummy.

Suddenly, he stood, turned to the window and copped the voice he used to end a conversation instantly. “Keep me posted, Brandon. And I’ll let you know what I decide.”

For a moment, he didn’t move, but stared at the cloudless blue sky, his back rising and falling with steady, slow breaths.

Then he turned and trained his midnight gaze on her. “As you can tell, Anna, I didn’t get good news this morning.”

She set the call sheet on his desk. “That must explain the seventeen voice-mail messages.”

He scanned the list, and swore so softly she almost didn’t hear it. “Brandon’s right.”

“About?”

“I have to be at the IH & RA ball in London. It’s more important than ever that I maintain…” He paused, assessing her as though he was wondering just how much to tell her. “Leadership.”

“Your leadership is never in doubt.”

He tilted his head, acknowledging the compliment with shuttered lids that said he believed the opposite. At least, at the moment. Then he yanked out his chair and sat, leaning forward the way he always did when he made a decision that he would not second-guess. Not that he’d ever second-guessed anything, ever, in his life.

“Please arrange for the charter jet company to have a Gulfstream V ready to leave tomorrow, very early, from Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport. That will put me in London Friday evening, with plenty of time to make the function on Saturday and return on Sunday morning. I’ll be back in the office on Monday. I’ll need the Berkeley Suite at the Ritz-Carlton London. Don’t let them tell you it’s not available—”

“I’ll use your name.”

“Yes, and I’ll need a limo to and from the event, which is—”

“At Guildhall.”

“Right. And I have a driver in London I prefer—”