Just Before My Wedding: Trapped By My Ruthless Boss novel Chapter 21

Chapter 21

OCEANS.

“What the fuck is going on, Oceans?” Logan asked the moment my door clicked shut behind

1. us.

“What do you mean?” I rounded the table to my seat, undoing my suit jacket.

“The girl. Why were you standing so close?” He gestured outside at Kisarel’s office, which was demarcated by a glass wall and a door.

She was just outside my office – in our office – her desk sat directly in my line of sight through the glass, which I had arranged deliberately when she was transferred to my office and had told myself at the time was purely practical. I could see her clearly from where I sat. She had her head down now, her hair falling forward over the files she was organizing, completely unaware she was being discussed.

“She’s my personal assistant, Logan,” I said, pulling the first file toward me. “We work in close proximity. That’s the nature of the role.”

“I asked you in DC if you slept with her. You practically avoided that question.” He stepped closer, planting both palms flat on my desk and leaning forward until I had no reasonable choice but to look up at him. “So… Did you?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Straight to the point.”

He took a deep breath and straightened up, “You can’t do this. You know that better than anyone. The last time you got involved with someone who worked for you-”

“I don’t need the reminder,” I said flatly. “And she is not Becky.”

“Exactly!” He came back fast, pointing at her. “She’s not Becky. She’s someone far more look at her, Oceans. Look at her. She’s barely out of her depth on a good day. A naive, sheltered little nerd who doesn’t even know how to-”

I was out of my chair before I’d made a conscious decision to stand.

My palm came down on the desk hard enough that the files shifted. “Enough.”

Logan stopped talking, and the silence that followed had a texture to it.

I held his gaze and let my blood do what it was doing behind my eyes without letting any more of it into my voice than had already gotten out.

“One more degrading word about her and I swear to God…”

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Chapter 21

Logan looked at me like I had completely lost my mind. Then he scoffed, “Now you want to hit me over some random pussy you’re fucking?”

“Logan.” My voice came out very quietly.

“How good is it, huh? What’s so special about it?” He went

“Logan…”

“Jace also dips his cock in the same pussy!”

There. He got me.

My fist hit the wall.

1. on.

The sound of it bounced off every surface in the room, and my knuckles burned immediately, and I didn’t care even slightly. I turned to face him with what I can only describe as every year of restraint I had ever practiced burning clean off me at once.

“One more word.” My voice was barely above a murmur, which was how he would know I meant it. When I was loud, I was angry. When I went quiet, I was something else entirely. “One more word about her, Logan, and I will throw away ten years without looking back. Do you understand me?”

He only smirked when the door to my office flung open, and Kisarel rushed in, her eyes wide, her gaze going immediately to the mark my fist had left in the wall and then to my face and then to Logan and back to me.

“Sir? Is everything—”

“Get out.” The words came out before I could calibrate them.

She absorbed the impact of it with a stillness that was worse than if she’d flinched. Her face went carefully blank. She nodded once, retreated, and pulled the door shut behind her without a sound.

Logan watched the door close. When he turned back to me, his smirk had returned.

“She is your fiancée’s cousin. What kind of a woman would sleep with her cousin’s man, if not a loose woman?” He maintained his smirk.

“I’ll never be behind this, Oceans. I want you to know that.”

“I don’t recall asking.”

“You should be asking.” He stepped closer, and to his credit, the smirk dropped, replaced by something that looked, underneath everything, like genuine concern, which was the only reason I was still standing here and not physically removing him from my office. “You’ve

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Chapter 21

desired her for years. And you have been holding it back. I’ve watched you do it. And now you’ve crossed the line, and I know you I know exactly how you are when you want something you decide to have. You won’t know where to stop. You won’t even look for where to stop.” He held my gaze. “This ends your marriage before it begins. It ends her engagement. It ends her career if it gets out, and these things always get out. It could end everything you’ve built if the wrong person finds out at the wrong time.” He paused. “You can still stop this. Right now, before it becomes something you can’t walk back from.”

I held his gaze for a moment before I spoke, “Get Out.”

***

“He’s expecting you, sir. I was able to get him to agree to meet with you,” Reeves said over the phone.

“Good. I’ll be running fifteen minutes late. Last–minute board meeting with our Sydney branch just came up.”

“Understood, sir. I’ll let him know.”

I dropped the call and set the phone face down on the desk.

The rest of the day moved the way long days do when there’s enough work stacked on top of itself to keep your hands occupied while your mind does something else entirely – meeting after meeting, call after call, three separate situations that each required a version of my attention that I parceled out with the efficiency of a man who had been doing this long enough that his body could run the operations while his brain went wherever it wanted.

And apparently, wherever it wanted was through the glass wall.

I caught myself doing it more times than I was going to document.

I had to hand it to Noella – she’d done exactly what I asked and done it well. The dress Kiss was wearing today had done something irreversible to my ability to pretend I wasn’t looking. I made a mental note to approve whatever bonus Noella submitted next month without argument.

Kiss needed more dresses like that one. I hoped a weekend with Noella had made that much clear to her.

The day burned through itself the way days do when you’re running close to capacity, and by the time six o’clock arrived, I was reviewing the final notes for my meeting with the board and beginning to seriously weigh whether a twenty–one–hour flight tomorrow was something my body was going to forgive me for.

I was still making that calculation when my office door clicked open.

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I didn’t need to look up to see who it was.

Kiss.

“Sir…” Her voice came from the doorway. “Is it okay if I leave now?”

I lifted my gaze.

She was standing at the threshold with one hand still on the door handle, her body angled like she hadn’t fully committed to being in the room yet, those blue eyes finding mine with the careful, cautious look she’d been giving me since this morning.

“What are you doing standing out there?” I leaned back in my seat, “Come on in.”

She nodded and stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind her. She crossed to the desk and stopped in front of it – that stupid slab of mahogany sitting between.

She stood with her hands clasped in front of her, her chin lifted just enough to maintain the professional atmosphere.

She had been doing that all day. Keeping herself at exactly the right distance. Saying exactly the right things. Being exactly the right version of Miss Harry, my PA.

looked at her for a moment.

Then I crooked a finger. “Come here.”

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