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Since we had been together in the hotel in Jersey, I hadn’t wanted to be away from her. Considering how dangerous it was for us to see each other, I didn’t quite know what to make of my feelings. Even without everything that had gone wrong, I didn’t know how to interpret what was going on. I didn’t usually see the women in my life again if I could help it. I definitely didn’t sleep with them more than once. With Erica, it had already been three times, and I wanted more.
I tried to pull my mind away from Erica and focus on the tasks in front of me. I still had a company to run and a mess to sweep up. Everything was going well on that front. The company was slowly turning around again, the stocks were creeping up again, and the investors, although grumbling, weren’t threatening to leave anymore. These were all good signs.
Erica came into my office with a piece of paper that she had scribbled a note on.
“I spoke to the regional manager for Loomis Energy, but I can’t answer his questions. You need to phone him back. I wrote the questions down for you.” She handed me the piece of paper, and I glanced at her notes.
“I’ll take care of this, thank you,” I said.
Erica made a move to leave my office, but she hesitated. I looked up at her. We were still going strong with our strictly-business act.
“How do you feel about me?” Erica asked.
The question surprised me. Not only was it out of the blue, but it was straight out there when we had been hiding everything for days now.
How did I feel about her? How was I going to answer that?
“I like what we have going on,” I said. That was the truth, wasn’t it? And it didn’t sound too objectifying.
“Do you think we should just go public with our relationship so we can stop hiding?” Erica asked.
The word “relationship” scared me. We weren’t there yet. I wasn’t ready to put it in so many words.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea right now,” I hedged. I could hide behind that excuse for now. “Maybe we should wait until the attention on us dies down a little more.”
Erica seemed to think about that for a moment. I hoped she would buy it. She had caught me off guard with her question, and I needed time to think. I needed a way to explain to her what I was feeling. For that matter, I needed the time to figure out what exactly I was feeling.
“Okay, I guess you’re right,” Erica agreed and turned to leave my office. When she was gone, I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.
What the hell was wrong with me? I should have just said yes. I did like her. I thought about her all the time, and when I wasn’t with her, I wanted to see her. I didn’t want to admit to it, but I was falling for her. Hard. Men like me didn’t simply fall for a woman, but Erica wasn’t just any woman. She was one of a kind, and I would be an idiot to let her get away.
I had a lot of experience charming women so that I could get into their pants. I knew exactly how to get them to swoon over me, how to get them to believe that a night with me would be the best thing that ever happened to them. And I knew exactly how to get rid of them the morning after.
That had become an exact science.
What I had absolutely no experience with was my heart and what it wanted. I knew how to satisfy my dick, but I had no idea how to follow my feelings. It was uncharted territory, and I wasn’t sure how to go about it. I realized it made me look like an idiot, but in my circles, especially with Shane around, men were judged by their ability to sexually pull the woman over, not by winning her heart. It was all fucked up if I had to be honest, but it was a fact.
Which meant that now that Erica had asked me to put my feelings into so many words, I had hit a blank and backpedaled instead of giving her an answer that would push her away. After trying to get closer to her for so long and making an effort to see her despite the rumors, it was contradicting. For the first time since I had discovered my dick, I felt the need to talk to someone about it. Shane wasn’t the best person to turn to when it came to love—lust was more his area of expertise—but I had no one else to talk to. Despite Shane’s disposition, he was a good friend, and I knew he would try at least. Even if he knew even less about feelings than I did.
