Lingerie, I can handle. Visions, I can create. A team, I can inspire. A boss, I can please.

I smile at him and can see the worry in his eyes.

It’s amazing how productive I am when Claudia is removed from the equation. In a typical day at L&L, I spent five or six hours with her. On my first day at Marks, there was a three-hour stretch where I closed my office door and no one bothered me. Total silence! For three hours! I was able to review four years of catalogs and product lines before lunch. I unpacked my thermos and ate at my desk, diving into the designers’ files, a task which ate up the rest of the day. I left by six, and was asleep by nine.

On my second day, I conducted an employee survey, as well as interviewed the entire design staff, one-by-one, a process that ate up almost seven hours. The general consensus, though they didn’t use these exact terms: Trey is amazing and this job is a cupcake run. Maybe it’s the last decade I’ve spent in cardigan-wearing hell, but my lip had curled a little at the idea of a company drowning, and their employees enjoying the ride. It is past time to rock this boat.

Trey walks by, his jacket on, keys in hand, and I already hate this glass wall that separates my office from the hall. Each pass of his suit reminds me of a donut shop display, a million calories, lined up to tempt you. A million mistakes, all brightly lit and just a touch away. Just before his office, he turns his head, our eyes meet, and it’s like biting into a dark chocolate eclair. That one hold of eye contact—it’s addictive, the promise of more, the knowledge that you should put it down and walk away.

I’ve never been good with sweets. If I have one nibble, one bite—I’ll eat an entire box. I’ll wreck my stomach and destroy my diet, toss away weeks of hard work. I’ll give up everything for one long moment of gluttonous satisfaction. I look away, and it is a torturous effort.

It’s his fourth pass this morning, his office two doors down from mine. This isn’t going to work. Not with a man like him, one too tall to miss, that suit jacket stretching smoothly over muscular shoulders, his dress pants sliding sleekly over what appears to be a perfect ass. God, listen to me. His ass? I’ve never even noticed a man’s ass before. I stand up from my desk before I lose all sense completely. I have four months before I pitch him my vision for next year. Four months to break apart every style line that Marks Lingerie makes and rework it into my own.

The first step to that goal? Remove distractions.

I stand and walk to the corner of the room, then turn back and survey my desk.

Him

She’s turned her work station. It’s not the first thing I notice when I walk by. The first is her ass. She stands beside the desk, the phone to her ear, and leans forward, her fingers moving on the mousepad, the position serving her body up perfectly. I stop, on my way to the reception desk, a shipping schedule in hand, and can’t help but stare.

Long legs stretching up from modest heels. A skirt that starts at the knee and hugs tightly. Her feet are slightly spread, and if I got behind her right now, I wouldn’t have to change anything to her position. My hands biting into her hips. That skirt unzipped and puddled around her ankles. Panties pulled aside, cock lined up, her face looking back, eyes on mine.

I force myself to step forward, to put one shoe ahead of the other, the page crumpling in my grip.

“Explain to me what the fuck you’ve done.” I try to control my voice, try to contain the anger that is rippling through me. The pressure is fucking with my head, it’s fraying at my psyche. Three years ago, I would never have lost my cool over this. Three years ago, I would have politely fired the woman and then left the office, the day still bright enough to get in a trip to Malibu. Three years ago, I didn’t have the IRS and every bank in town on my ass.

She looks up from her computer and nods toward her door, not one ounce of concern in that pretty face. “Please shut the door.”

My hands tighten on the back of the leather chair, one of two that sits before her desk. I straighten, and reach one hand out, the tight quarters making it easy to grab ahold of the door and swing.

Click. The sounds from the office disappear. I turn to face her, and she sits back, her arms crossing over the front of her chest. “I need more clarification. I’ve done a lot of things.”

“I can see that.” If she were a man, I’d have her by her throat, pushed up against the wall, so close that our bodies were touching. Maybe it’s better that she’s not. I’d probably lose focus.

She rolls her eyes as if I don’t hold her job in my hands. As if she owns this company, and I am bothering her with my questions. “I don’t have time to play games, Trey. What did I do to piss you off?”

I should fire her. Right now. Fire her and spend the rest of the day putting my company back together. My hands find the back of the chair again, and I wrap my palms around it, squeezing hard. “You fired seven people.” Seven. A third of the design staff.

“My job description states that I can adjust staffing.”

“That’s not an adjustment, that’s insanity.”

“It cleared five hundred thousand dollars off of the budget. And I spoke to the design staff about it.”

“Which staff?” I think of the seven people on her ax list. Seven lives she just ruined. Would they find new jobs? Would they—

“All of them.”

“Twenty-two employees?” Unlikely.

“At ten minutes per meeting, it doesn’t take that long. I got in early yesterday and knocked it out. Plus, I used the survey results.”

Oh yes. The survey. That had certainly put the department into a state of panic. “That wasn’t a survey, it was a witch hunt.” The survey had contained only three questions. It had been sent to her team at precisely two o’clock, and a timer had run in the top of the window, giving the participants only thirty seconds to complete the survey. The first question had asked, on a scale of one to ten, how overworked you felt. The second asked which three jobs were expendable in the company. The third asked which three people were expendable.

“Witch hunt or not, the results were fairly clear.” She slides a piece of paper forward, one covered in bar graphs and statistics.

“You fired Ginger. She’s practically our mascot.” Ginger, the seventy-year-old woman who prepared coffee each morning and got everyone’s lunch. Her official title was something about quality control.

“Be realistic.” She stands up, her steel gaze nothing like the polite interviewee who had quivered before me. “You can’t have mascots and people working here just because they are well-liked. You can’t have a hundred percent of your employees giving ones and twos on their level of stress.” She stabs a finger toward the page. “You are running a business, one that, if we don’t turn around, is going to end up firing every single one of them. I need you to trust me, and in one year, we’ll be giving jobs to a dozen new people. In one year, we will be profitable. In one year, if you want Ginger back, you can have her.”

I’ve never wanted to kiss a woman so badly in my life. To bury my hands in her hair and dominate that mouth. My hands twitch on the leather back of the chair. I stop myself from moving forward and pulling her across that glass desk.

I don’t like strong women. I don’t like being yelled at. I don’t like being proven wrong. She has the data. She’s done the homework. I know, I have known, that we are slightly overstaffed. I’ve known for six months that I should lay off one or two people. Seven people is ridiculous. But half a million dollars is badly needed.

“I didn’t hire you to run my business. I hired you for your creative input and vision. I hired you to create products that sell. You have to consult me in these decisions, even if it involves your team.” She doesn’t understand that this is my family, paychecks I have paid for nine years, lives that depend on me.

“I was typing up a memo when you came in. You’ll have it within the hour. It will explain all of the reasoning behind the decisions.”

“Next time, get me the memo before you fire anyone.”

She tilts her head, as if she is considering the order. I watch her front teeth bite gently down on her bottom lip, and all I can think about is my cock sliding into that mouth. “I need decision-making ability. It’s in my job descript—”