The Beaumont Brothers. Sarah M. Anderson

day of playing dress-up had gone right to her head. She must have forgotten who she was. She was really Serena Chase, frugal employee. She wasn’t the kind of woman who had rich men lavish her with exorbitant gifts. She wasn’t Chadwick’s lover.

      Oh God, she’d let him kiss her. She’d kissed him back.

      What had she done?

      Chadwick’s face grew more distant. He, too, seemed to be realizing that they’d crossed a line they couldn’t uncross. It made her feel even more miserable. “Ah, yes. I probably have work to do as well.”

      “Probably.” They might have been playing hooky for a few hours that afternoon, but the world had kept on turning. The fallout from the board meeting no doubt had investors, analysts and journalists burning up the bandwidth, all clamoring for a statement from Chadwick Beaumont.

      But more than that, she needed to be away from him. This proximity wasn’t helping her cause. She needed to clear her head and stop having fantasies about her boss. Fantasies that now had a very real feel to them—the feeling of his lips against hers, his body pressed to hers. Fantasies that would probably play out in her dreams that night.

      She couldn’t accept dinner on top of the dresses. She had to draw the line somewhere.

      But she’d already crossed that line.

      How much farther would she go?

       Six

      Chadwick did not sleep well.

      He told himself that it had everything to do with the disastrous board meeting and nothing to do with Serena Chase, but what the hell was the point in lying? It had everything to do with Serena.

      He shouldn’t have kissed her. Rationally, he knew that. He’d fired other executives for crossing that very same line—one strike and they were out. For way too long, Beaumont Brewery had been a business where men took all kinds of advantage of the women who worked for them. That was one of the first things he’d changed after his father died. He’d had Serena write a strict sexual harassment policy to prevent exactly this situation.

      He’d always taken the higher road. Fairness, loyalty, equality.

      He was not Hardwick Beaumont. He would not seduce his secretary. Or his executive assistant, for that matter.

      Except that he’d already started. He’d told her he was taking her to the gala. He’d taken her shopping and bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of gowns, jewels and handbags for her.

      He’d kissed her. He’d wanted to do so much more than just kiss her, too. He’d wanted to leave that gown in a puddle on the floor and sit back on the loveseat, Serena’s body riding his. He wanted to feel the full weight of her breasts in his hands, her body taking his in.

      He’d wanted to do something as base and crass as take her in a dressing room, for God’s sake. And that was exactly what Hardwick would have done.

      So he’d stopped. Thankfully, she’d stopped, too.

      She hadn’t wanted the dresses. She’d fought him tooth and nail about that.

      But the kiss?

      She’d kissed him back. Tracing his mouth with her tongue, pressing those amazing breasts against him—holding him just as tightly as he had been holding her.

      He found himself in his office by five-thirty the next morning, running a seven-minute mile on his treadmill. He had the international market report up on the screen in front of him, but he wasn’t paying a damn bit of attention to it.

      Instead, he was wondering what the hell he was going to do about Serena.

      She was pregnant. And when she’d come out in those gowns, she’d glowed. She’d always been beautiful—a bright, positive smile for any occasion with nary a manipulating demand in sight—but yesterday she’d taken his breath away over and over again.

      He was totally, completely, one hundred percent confounded by Serena Chase. The women in Chadwick’s world did not refuse expensive clothing and jewelry. They spent their days planning how to get more clothes, better jewels and a skinnier body. They whimpered and pleaded and seduced until they got what they wanted.

      That’s what his mother had always done. Chadwick doubted whether Eliza and Hardwick had ever really loved each other. She’d wanted his money, and he’d wanted her family prestige. Whenever Eliza had caught Hardwick in flagrante delicto—which was often—she’d threaten and cry until Hardwick plunked down a chunk of change on a new diamond. Then, when one diamond wasn’t enough, he started buying them in bulk.

      Helen had been like that, too. Oh, she didn’t threaten, but she did pout until she got what she wanted—cars, clothes, plastic surgery. It had been so much easier to just give in to her demands than deal with the manipulation. In the last year before she filed for divorce, she’d only slept with him when he’d bought her something. Not that he’d enjoyed it much, even then.

      Somehow, he’d convinced himself he was fine with that. He didn’t need to feel passion because passion left a man wide open for the pain of betrayal. Because there was always another betrayal around the next corner.

      But Serena? She didn’t cry, didn’t whine and didn’t pout. She never treated him like he was a pawn to be moved until she got what she wanted, never treated him like he was an obstacle she had to negotiate around.

      She didn’t even want to let him buy her a dress that made her feel beautiful.

      He punched the treadmill up another mile per hour, running until his lungs burned.

      He could not be lusting after his assistant and that was final.

      This was just the result of Helen moving out of their bedroom over twenty-two months before, that was all. And they hadn’t had sex for a couple of months before that. Yes, that was it. Two years without a woman in his arms—without a woman looking at him with a smile, without a woman who was glad to see him.

      Two years was a hell of a long time.

      That’s all this was. Sexual frustration manifesting itself in the direction of his assistant. He hadn’t wanted to break his marriage vows to Helen, even in the middle of their never-ending divorce. Part of that was a wise business decision—if Helen found out that he’d had an affair, even after their separation, she wouldn’t sign off on the divorce until he had nothing left but his name.

      But part of that was refusing to be like his father.

      Except his father totally would have lavished gifts on his secretary and then kissed her.

      Hell.

      Finally his legs gave out, but instead of the normal clarity a hard run brought him, he just felt more muddled than ever. Despite the punishing exercise, he was no closer to knowing what he was supposed to do when Serena came in for their morning meeting.

      Oh, he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to lay her out on his desk and lavish her curves with all the attention he had. He wanted her to straddle him. He wanted to bring her to a shuddering, screaming climax, and he wanted to hold her afterwards and fall asleep in her arms.

      He didn’t just want to have sex.

      He wanted to have Serena.

      Double damn.

      He threw himself into his shower without bothering to touch the hot water knob. The cold did little to shock him back to his senses, but at least it knocked his erection down to a somewhat manageable level.

      This was beyond lust. He had a need to take care of her—to not fail her. That was why he’d bought her nice things, right? Sure. He was just rewarding her loyalty.

      She’d said that her ex hadn’t responded to her email. There—that was something he could do. He could get that jerk to step up to the plate and at least acknowledge that he’d left Serena in a difficult situation.