Restraining the Receptionist: ... the Receptionist, Book 2 by Juniper Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

limp.
    Maybe he didn’t need to hide his limp from me anymore.
    That night Simon called me after his dinner meeting.
    “Ethan was a prisoner of war?” I said, before he’d finished saying “hello”.
    “So he told you.”
    “Kind of.”
    “Yeah, he almost didn’t survive. They just about killed him over there. But that man is a force to be reckoned with. And then he kicked his heroin addiction. By himself. The man’s a tough mother-fucker.”
    Simon sounded tired. “How was your dinner?”
    He started to answer, but something else occurred to me. “He wants me to get a piercing. I don’t want one.”
    “Sweetheart, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You know that.” Irritation buzzed across the phone line.
    “I know, but he made it sound pretty hot.”
    “He has a knack for that.”
    Enough about Ethan. “When are you coming back?”
    “Soon. Do you miss me? How are those sweet nipples of yours?” Simon tried to get some phone sex going, but as soon as I told him getting off was off-limits, he backed off. Now that I knew more about Ethan, I understood why. Ethan would always be the dominant one. The question was, how did I feel about that?
    It would be best if I kept my distance from Ethan Cowell until Simon returned. That way I could keep everything straight in my mind. Simon would finish his business trip, come home and we’d all go back to normal.
    Our normal fun and games, that is.

Chapter Five
    But my unpredictable number one boss showed up in a new mood the next day. I’d never seen him light-hearted before. Now that I had an idea about his history, not a big surprise. But that’s exactly how he seemed when he breezed into the office. He wore casual clothes, blue jeans and a light blue open-collared shirt that made his eyes look like summer without the smog.
    “I’ve got no pesky clients today, luv,” he told me, without pausing by my desk to check my outfit, which he usually did. “I’d like you to order us a picnic lunch.”
    “Huh?”
    “Picnic. You have those in America, right? Or are they banned in the great state of New York?”
    “We have them, but you can’t even spread out a blanket without kicking aside a stray used needle or two.” As soon as I said it I remembered the heroin. “I…I’m sorry,” I stammered.
    But my thoughtless reference didn’t make him miss a beat. “A little local color will add to the experience, I’m sure. Handle the details and we’ll go around noon.”
    Did a picnic violate the terms of our deal? Ethan and I would be doing something outside of work, just the two of us, something intimate. Almost like a date. But he hadn’t suggested anything physical. It was lunch. We both had to eat, right? It seemed perfectly harmless.
    Since I was working from the company petty cash fund, I called up the neighborhood yuppie café where they served giant organic sandwiches. On my budget, I would have gone for a Subway footlong. But Ethan would no doubt demand something better.
    We held our picnic on a concrete bench in a sweltering park a few blocks away from the office. Dog walkers and stroller-pushers, listless from the heat, wandered by now and then, but otherwise we were alone. The humid heat pressed on us like a steam iron. My hair stuck to my cheeks as I bit into my upscale sandwich.
    Ethan didn’t comment on the slabs of free-range chicken that had probably been hand-raised and read bedtime stories before being slaughtered and inserted into a sandwich. He did remove the unruly mound of bean sprouts and toss it to a nearby pigeon. The pigeon pecked at the stuff, clucked scornfully and waddled the other direction.
    I couldn’t help giggling at Ethan’s wounded expression. “I wouldn’t take it personally,” I told him. “He’s a New York pigeon. He’s used to eating dog crap.”
    He chuckled. “Have you lived here your whole life, Dana?”
    The sheer ordinariness of the question unnerved me. “Well, except for that