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Sterling openly scowled. “Isaac, I realize the market is slightly down this morning, but you’re going to be spending a lot of time with Autumn, so let’s keep things positive, okay?”
Autumn’s face tingled. The negative vibe in the room was getting more uncomfortable by the moment.
Isaac slipped his phone into his pants pocket. “You know me, Sterling.” He shrugged calmly. “I was just playing.”
He dropped into a chair next to Autumn and leaned back. She smiled and held his gaze, a tactic she used to build rapport with a client, a potential suspect or a man who was really, really cute.
An unbidden spark pulsed between them, like the feeling one gets when suddenly remembering a long-forgotten dream, and Autumn knew that she’d have to be careful not to succumb to temptation.
Suddenly Isaac shot up in his chair. “What do you mean we’re going to be spending a lot time together?” It was as if he’d just now grasped the full extent of what his boss had said moments earlier.
Felicia’s eyes narrowed at Autumn and Isaac before turning her attention to Sterling. “Yes, Father. Explain.”
“That’s why I called the meeting,” Sterling bellowed, ignoring Felicia’s glare. “For the next few weeks, Isaac, you’re going to be Autumn’s mentor. Getting her acclimated to the way we do things around here.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Autumn saw Felicia’s hands tense.
“M-mentoring!” Felicia sputtered. “What are you talking about, Daddy? My new employee onboarding process doesn’t begin until next month.”
Sterling pressed his index finger on the table and shook his head. “It starts now, Felicia.”
“But the process hasn’t been fully vetted,” she protested.
Sterling shrugged and leaned back in his chair, as if the matter was settled. “What better use case than a real scenario?”
Felicia smoothed her blond-in-a-bottle hair. She was probably very pretty when she smiled, but that wasn’t the case now.
“Legal won’t like it,” she warned.
He gave a disgusted sigh. “Have you forgotten that our in-house attorneys report to me?”
Felicia threw up her hands in exasperation. “I haven’t even completed all the required documentation.”
Sterling looked up from his cell phone and rolled his eyes. “Great, just what we need. More paperwork.”
Autumn cast a glance at Felicia and stifled a laugh. If she had a pencil, paper and an artistic bone in her body, she would sketch two plumes of steam erupting from each of her ears and fire blazing in her eyes. The woman looked that angry.
Sterling’s phone beeped loudly and he stood. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m due at another meeting in a few minutes.” He handed Isaac a manila folder. “I’ll leave you two alone to get acquainted.”
Autumn smiled at Felicia and she could almost see the wheels turning in her head. Her gaze lingered on Isaac for a moment, as if that would lure him away. She seemed to sense something that neither Autumn nor Isaac could have imagined.
Sterling opened the door and exhaled impatiently. “Felicia, are you coming?”
Autumn tapped the stack of papers with her pen, breaking the tense moment.
“I’ll have these back to you this afternoon.”
Felicia rewarded her with a nod and a thin-lipped smile.
“Right behind you, Father.”
She waited until Sterling was gone, and then rose from her chair slowly, as if she were still reluctant to leave.
Autumn felt Isaac’s gaze upon her cheek. She dug the toes of her shoes into the carpet in a vain attempt to hold on to the twinge of pleasure that zoomed through her body.
“Isaac,” Felicia said sharply. “Be sure to show her my office, won’t you?” Her voice suddenly dropped to almost a whisper, like dark silk hiding a double-edged sword. “You know the way.”
Without saying another word, Felicia quickly walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, leaving an empty vacuum of silence and longing.
The statement was an invitation for Isaac, backed up by veiled warning meant for any woman who might interfere.
Namely, Autumn.
But what Felicia didn’t know was that Autumn wasn’t a threat to whatever hold—real or imagined—she had on Isaac. Sterling hadn’t hired her to bed the man, although at first glance the thought did cross her mind. No, she was here to conduct an investigation into a possible case of corporate securities fraud.
Autumn didn’t know what, if anything, was going on between the two of them, but if it affected the outcome of this case, she would damn sure find out.
Chapter 2
Isaac leaned back in his chair and almost smiled at the irony. He hadn’t been expecting a beautiful woman on the agenda for Monday morning. Then again, he’d never expected to be cooking breakfast every day for two children, either.
Or trying to cook. His kids were not pleased with having to settle for Pop-Tarts. Again.
He sniffed lightly wondering if the stench of burned bacon was still on him and what Autumn would think if it was.
Isaac mentally slapped himself upside the head. If he cared even a little bit about the opinions of this perfect stranger, this gorgeous stranger, the stress must be really getting to him. He had two children to think about now, not impressing a woman.
He was a father.
“Anything wrong?”
The concern in Autumn’s voice sounded so genuine, he nearly blurted out, Everything.
And it was true. His life was in a state of total upheaval right now. Sure, the chaos was the result of choices he wanted to make, but that didn’t make things any easier.
Instead Isaac opted for the answer likely echoed in countless offices across the country on any given morning. Men and women just like him who wished someone would care, but who also realized that most people were too busy just trying to make it in this crazy world to bother.
He faked a yawn. “I was running late and missed my morning coffee.”
Isaac kept his gaze trained on the boardroom window. The mid-January sky was a bleak and dirty gray, the kind that makes you wonder if the sun will ever shine again. For reasons he didn’t understand, he didn’t want to look too deeply into Autumn’s eyes. It wasn’t that he was afraid of what he would see in them, but of what he wouldn’t.
“I don’t drink coffee.”
Her voice wove through his ears, piercing the fog of his thoughts. It was throaty, insistent and knotted with just enough innate sexiness to make his groin twitch in a way that made him glad he was sitting down.
Just to be on the safe side, he rolled closer to the table and turned his head toward her.
“What mortal doesn’t drink coffee?” he said in an incredulous tone. “What gets you up in the morning? Your extremely good looks?”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth that he realized he’d overstepped the boundaries between simple curiosity and workplace etiquette. Rule number one: never acknowledge the physical attractiveness of your coworkers.
He hated the fact that his stomach clenched as he waited for her reaction, but Autumn just sat there with a blank expression on her face.
If Felicia was still in the room, she’d probably write him up. Ever since she tried to seduce him and he’d turned her down, he’d been paying for it. She watched him like a hawk circling prey.
Did she really think he was stupid enough to bed Sterling’s daughter? His working relationship with his boss was strained enough without any additional help from Felicia’s shenanigans. Although Isaac doubted Sterling knew anything about Felicia’s unwanted advances, he couldn’t be sure without actually asking him.
Still, Isaac had a nagging feeling that the partnership he’d busted his butt working for his entire career was now out of reach, and he didn’t know why.
Autumn’s voice broke in on his reverie. “No. What gets me up in the morning is,” she replied, leaning forward, as if in secret. “Pure. Adrenaline.”
Her plump lips, coated with just a hint of pale pink gloss, turned up into a very kissable half smile. She seemed amused rather than offended at his statement, which made her even more attractive.
Her perfume, the scent of a flower he recalled but at the moment couldn’t name, teased his nose. At that moment, he knew he would drive himself crazy trying to remember and wishing he could smell more of her.
Isaac whooshed out a breath of relief. “Ah, yes. I remember those days.”
The times he couldn’t wait to get to the office. He was always the first to arrive, the last to leave and the chump who didn’t mind coming in on weekends and holidays. All B.K.
Before kids.
Thank God, they’d saved him.
Autumn settled back in her chair. “So what happened?”
Isaac’s heart squeezed again at the caring in her voice and he drummed his fingers on the table under her intense gaze. Although the question was a legitimate one, he wasn’t about to tell her—or anyone else—the truth.
“The world’s financial markets collapsed one by one. Making our jobs a whole lot tougher. You need more than adrenaline to survive in this business now. You need a magic wand and the ability to predict the future.”
Autumn’s warm laugh resonated throughout the room and sank into his bones, and for a moment he felt carefree and relaxed.
Her expression quickly sobered. “That’s part of the reason why I’m here.”
He frowned, sorry to see her smile disappear but suddenly knowing why. “Another victim of downsizing?”
Autumn nodded. “We’d lost so many clients that it didn’t make sense to keep all our analysts around. Or at least that’s what they told me.”
He couldn’t imagine being jobless. In the past, it was something he’d never had to worry about. But with the way Felicia was acting toward him lately, he wasn’t so confident. Since she was Sterling’s daughter, nobody at Paxton really knew how much influence she had over him. To be ensnared in her web was one place no employee ever wanted to be.
“Their loss is our gain,” Isaac replied with what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
Her exuberant grin was infectious. “Thank you. I’m really excited to be here and to be working with you.”
Autumn tilted her head and he watched her curls skim the edge of her jawline. He wondered what that hair would feel like in his fingers. Her white, long-sleeved silk blouse did not detract his eyes from coveting what was beneath. In his mind, he saw his hands around her trim waist as she hitched up her navy blue skirt.
Isaac’s groin tightened painfully and he shifted slightly in his seat as his body involuntarily reacted to a sudden desire for Autumn that he didn’t understand. But he did know this: furtive glances at her across the cafeteria or in a meeting room would never satisfy him.
He bet that, beneath the stark corporate garb, she was as soft and fleeting as the snowflakes that were beginning to swirl outside. Yet he sensed she was tough to catch and even tougher to hold on to. That’s why he had to stay as far away from her as he could manage.
He picked up her résumé to distract himself. There was no current home address listed, but he assumed she lived in the area. As was his custom, he flipped to the last page so he could review her work experience in reverse chronological order.
Reading quickly, he learned that Autumn had a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Mathematics, and a master’s degree in Statistics. All from Yale University. She was an Ivy girl, she was smart and she loved numbers. Plus, she had a killer body. It added up to some serious trouble for a man who was trying not to be attracted to her and failing badly.
“I hope you won’t let our respective universities affect our working relationship,” she said in a teasing voice.
He glanced up from the paper in front of him. “You’re referring to the long-standing rivalry between Yale and Harvard.”
She nodded and crossed her legs, sheathed in sheer hose he yearned to rip away.
He smiled. “A little bit of competition always makes things more interesting, no?”
“Most definitely,” she responded. “But I’m glad I’m on your team, rather than fighting against it.”
Isaac raised a brow. “Because you know you would lose?” he said matter-of-factly, hoping he didn’t sound arrogant.
She shook her head. “Not at all. But winning isn’t everything.”
Isaac glanced over at the door. “Don’t let Sterling ever hear you say that.”
Autumn didn’t ask why and Isaac was glad he didn’t have to explain. If she wanted a career at Paxton, she would learn for herself soon enough.
He returned his attention to her résumé and noticed something that puzzled him.
Like Autumn, Isaac had also made the decision to pursue an advanced degree directly after college. But the difference was that when he finished graduate school, he’d gone straight to work for Paxton, which was one of the leading investment firms in the country.
On the contrary, Autumn had worked at some midlevel investment banks all around the country. Los Angeles. Phoenix. Miami. Companies whose names he’d never even heard of.
He considered pressing the issue but decided against it.
Multiple job hops might make some people nervous, but not him. Autumn was young, intelligent, and she obviously knew when a situation wasn’t working to her advantage. Ambitiousness was a quality he admired, especially in a woman.
Besides, if Sterling trusted her enough to hire her, why shouldn’t he?
Still, he couldn’t let her off the hook completely. “Your résumé is impressive,” he began slowly. “But you’ve moved around a lot. Surely that’s not because of the economy every time, is it?”
“I always leave myself open to the possibilities of a greater challenge or something new.”
He flipped back to the first page again. “Your previous place of employment was in Cleveland?”
Autumn’s lips curved into a mischievous grin. “What can I say? I love to rock and roll!”
Isaac laughed aloud, pleased by the free-spirited tone in her voice. He found her playful attitude refreshing and very appealing. Even in the overbearing atmosphere of the boardroom, not to mention the pressure of the first day in a new job, she had no problem being herself.
Most women tried everything they could to impress him. The girls in the office knew he was single, available and one of the wealthiest men in New York City. Out on the street, the women knew him as a regular guy who was hotter than the asphalt on a July afternoon. In the winter, they worshipped the ground he melted ice on.
He’d be the first to admit that sometimes he took the bodies they willingly offered and he enjoyed them. The one-night stands most of these women hoped would turn into a lifetime of ardor and passion meant absolutely nothing to him.
While the opportunity to bed a beautiful woman and run the other way the next morning was still there, now he had two good reasons to refuse their advances. His children.
