Page 8 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
One single brow arches in a no-nonsense way. “That’s not at all what I said.” He redirects his gaze to the California plates on my car. “I’d just made the incorrect assumption that they’d already be settled here.”
Ugh, fine.
“My name is Maddie, by the way,” I tell him. “I don’t think either of us thought to get each other’s names.”
“Well,” he says, and then... he blushes. It’s cute on such a large man. “They did announce yours before your birthday... spanking, but I guess I had other things on my mind than giving you mine. I’m Bram Loe. I’m a professor of ecology at the university.”
“I’m adjuncting in the political science department. I suppose fucking my coworker is better than fucking my boss.”
The edges of his ears are glowing now too, but he is otherwise unruffled, which feels like a challenge, honestly. The last three years of my life have been dedicated to being as palatable as possible. But something about Bram makes me want to get a rise out of him.
Bram’s home is lived-in. Not in a hoarder sort of way, but in a way that unspools the tension in my shoulders. Gentry Cooper Wadethe Thirdand I had lived in a townhouse that was tidier than the model home we toured before he bought the place. Other than the tasteful portrait of us from our first Christmas together, there was no evidence of life. Our toothbrushes were put away every morning and night. There were no stray glasses of water and he squeegeed the shower door every day after his morning rub and tug. (Sex was strictly reserved for the hour of nine thirty to ten thirty in the evening. Morning sex was not conducive to focus.)
As Bram scrolls through his phone before pulling it to his ear, I realize he’s in a threadbare Astra University shirt instead of a repeat of the button-down he wore last night with the rolled-up sleeves. The vein coiling up his forearm and past his elbow disappears into the sleeve of his T-shirt as he waits for an answer on the other end of the line. And all I can think of is the way that same vein twitched when he pulled me to him with my back flat against his chest and reached around, flipped up my skirt, and molded his hand to my pulsing center. As I begged him to pull my panties aside and slide a finger through my wet folds.
Woo. Okay, I need some air. And maybe a splash of cold water to the face. Even when Bram is no longer officially my boss, hooking up with him again would be a bad idea. I need this job, and while I’m sure the university has some highly specific human resources song and dance for romantically involved faculty to adhere to that will make it permissible and aboveboard, a one-night stand—was it still a one-night stand if he went three times?—anyway, a horny little hookup was not really how I wanted to kick off my on-campus reputation.
Bram paces the kitchen, rolling a pen between his fingers, as he explains the situation to the staffing agency in broad terms.
He pauses, his eyes roving over me for a moment before he nods to himself. “Yes, we discovered that we have a... conflict of interest.”
“Nice one,” I whisper.
The only recognition I receive is one very annoyed arched brow.
“Right,” he says. “Well, I suppose that’s good for business.” He pauses. “Um... no. We will discuss first and I’ll call back if necessary.” He nods, his gaze finding mine as he ends the call. “Yes, thank you. You too.”
I lean forward on his kitchen island with my hands steepling over my lips. “That didn’t sound very promising.”
He shakes his head slowly. “Turns out there was an IVF baby boom in eastern Kansas three years ago and the plains are now overrun with twins. The agency says the soonest they can reassign someone would be in a month, which does me no good, because their mother is gonenow, and it’s just me.”
“Yeah.” I move to stand up and smooth my skirt. “That’s bad news... for you.”
Now he’s the one leaning on his kitchen island, scrubbing his hands over his face. He takes a few deep breaths before standing up straight, and his face is the picture of calm. “I’ll give you a twenty percent raise.”
“I didn’t realize we were negotiating.” My voice comes out more like a purr. Am I sexually aroused right now?
“We’re not,” he says flatly.
My face falls into a pout with my lower lip sticking out and my chin dropping. First, he and his great dick are costing me my job before it’s even started, and now he’s ruining my fun by not even letting me negotiate. Not that I’m entertaining his offer, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my brother, Nolan, it’s that you don’t fuck at work. (The fact he marriedhiswork hookup is irrelevant; Nolan’s sexual omnivorism meant that the odds of him marrying someone hehadn’tworked with in some capacity were unfavorable at best. So I still rest my case.)
Bram’s expression softens, and it stops me in my tracks.
“I’m desperate here,” he says. “I promise to make this the safest, most ideal work environment you could ever ask for. Besides, the whole purpose of your job is that you’re here when I’m not. We’d be ships in the night, Maddie. That’s all. I wouldn’t be asking you if I wasn’t completely out of options.”
He is right in that we would likely never see each other outside of passing along information about the kids. Berry and Lettyareadorable. And the agency did say that the third child was a seventeen-year-old girl who could drive. God, is he even old enough to have a teenage daughter?
I shouldn’t do this. In fact, I hadn’t even decided on if I would, but I couldn’t help but wonder if I could push him just a tad more. He might have said his offer was nonnegotiable, but I’d be kicking myself all day if I left without testing the waters. Just for fun, of course.
I inhale through my nose and pull the strap of my purse over my shoulder.
He reads my body language loud and clear. “Twenty-five,” he says. “Twenty-five percent.”
I rock back on my heels for a moment, ready to push, but he holds at twenty-five. A rush of adrenaline chases up my spine when he shakes his head. It’s rare that someone can keep pace with me when I’m bargaining, and it’s kind of sexy how quietly and mildly he can do it.
But I’m not quite done. “I have rules,” I say. My mouth is on autopilot at this point. I’m like a cat who has to know that the glass full of water will indeed spill and shatter the moment I knock it over.
“Anything you want,” he says, walking around the island and closing some of the distance between us.
