He wasn’t sure how to answer that, so he didn’t. “So, uh, where are you from originally?”

It had been years since he’d been this curious about a woman. She worked so hard. Never complained, and she was beautiful in a quiet and serene kind of way. She was nothing like the women he used to date—not that this was a date, nor was he even thinking about her that way. Okay, well, maybe a bit.

But they were just two people getting to know each other on a Friday night. At the office. He was rewarding her for her efforts. Yes, that’s what this was.

That’s all this was.

“A farm in South Dakota.” She put her fork down and held a hand up. “You’re shocked people actually live there, right?”

He swallowed a laugh. “Well, now that you mention it…”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, laughing and tossing a piece of bread at him.

It hit his chest, exploding with crumbs before it fell into his lap. He blinked down at it. No one, in all his thirty-three years, had ever thrown food at him. He’d seen it in movies but didn’t think people actually did it.

Something of his shock must have shown on his face, because she turned whiter than the table linen.

“Oh…” She jerked back, knocking her fork under the table. “Oh crap. I’m sorry, sir. So sorry. I forgot—”

He held up a hand. “It’s fine. Your fork might not agree, but I’m good.”

She laughed uneasily. “I’m such a klutz, give me a second.” Scooting out the chair, she crawled under the table. Benjamin lost sight of her, but her hand brushed his ankle, which didn’t do a lot of good for his dwindling resistance to her. “Oops.”

He swept the breadcrumbs off his crisp dress shirt, forcing his body to cool the hell off, and peeked at her under the table. She knelt at his feet, on all fours, and stared up at him. She rested a hand on his knee, laughing uneasily. “This isn’t awkward at all, right? I mean, I’m just a girl, kneeling under a table at her boss’s feet…”

An almost-laugh escaped him. “Maggie.”

The moment they locked eyes, the air between them became charged, and the desire was undeniably there. Her hand on his knee tightened, and then she let go with a small sound. The way she looked at him—all wide eyes and parted lips—practically begged him to stop fighting the attraction between them.

To take what she had to offer, and more.

He cleared his throat. “You—”

“I—” she started.

“Am I interrupting?” A chilly voice he recognized all too well intercepted.

Well, shit.

“Not at all.” He stiffened, fisting the dainty white napkin in his lap. He knew, just knew, his mother would immediately assume the worst as to why a woman was on her knees, under the table, in his office. “What are you doing here?”

“William informed me you were working late, so I decided to stop in. I see that working does not mean the same thing to me as it does you. No big surprise, of course.”

He stood to give her a stiff half-bow of greeting. She was about to skin him alive, and he had only himself to blame. He never should have invited Maggie to dinner. “What a pleasant surprise, Mother.”

“Moth—” Maggie straightened at his words, banging her head on the table. “Ow.”

“Oh, Benjamin.” She raised one haughty brown brow, curled her upper lip at his dinner companion, and hugged her Prada jacket closed. “I’ll just bet it is.”

Chapter Two

Maggie crawled out from under the table clutching her stupid fork, her face on fire and her heart racing. Out of all the positions to be found in, kneeling at her boss’s feet was not the most flattering. And the thing was, she was the person least likely to be caught messing around with her boss. She had bad enough luck with men as it was; she wasn’t about to throw the possibility of her ex firing her into the mix.

No, thank you.

She’d keep her disastrous romantic entanglements out of the office.

Once she made it to her feet with Mr. Gale’s help—which his mother did not miss—she smoothed her skirt and swallowed hard, still clinging to the fork for dear life as if it could somehow save her from what was coming. “Mrs. Gale. This isn’t—”

“Quiet,” the older woman snapped, without taking her murderous glare off of her son. “No one was speaking to you.”

Picking up her wine, she swallowed a healthy mouthful, and it washed down the retort attempting to choke her to death in front of her boss and his nasty mother. The woman watched her son like he was a bug she’d stepped on.

Something to be scraped off and forgotten.

And, in return, Mr. Gale watched his mother with all the warmth of a winter’s night. Maggie had never wanted the power to be invisible as much as she did right now.

And she used to pray for it every night.

Guess she knew now where he’d gotten his cold, emotionless exterior. He wasn’t rude to her or anything. He never was. He just didn’t really have the time, or the desire, to chat idly all day long. Something told her that he’d never been taught how.

They must not teach small talk at Harvard.

But they spent a lot of time alone at the office, so she got to see a side of him no one else did. And the more time she spent with him, the more he reminded her of a lost puppy who had all the bones in the world, but no idea what to do with them.

Especially after tonight.

“Please tell me this ‘dinner’ is not being billed to the company,” Mrs. Gale said, each word icier than the last. “Last I checked, there is no clause in your contract that states the company must pay for your many dalliances.”

Many dalliances?

She’d never have pegged Mr. Gale as a playboy.

Sure, he had the looks and the money to pull it off, but he spent almost all his time locked in his office, scowling out at his employees through the glass windows on either side of his closed door. Alone.

Covertly, she stole another glance at him as he shrugged back into his jacket while his mother watched him angrily. Tonight, he wore a black suit with a light green pinstripe dress shirt and a pair of black loafers. Something about the way his custom-made suit hugged all those hard muscles was a lot harder to ignore than it usually was—maybe because moments before she had been kneeling at his feet, staring up into his eyes and thinking how handsome he was from down there.

And he was. Handsome. From every angle.

Not just his feet.

He always had a slight five o’clock shadow going on, but she’d never seen his hair when it wasn’t picture perfect. The man easily could have been a GQ model, but instead he was the CEO of his family’s pharmaceutical company. He was well over six feet tall, weighed a little under two hundred pounds, was thirty-three years old, had attended Harvard for six years, and wore a size thirteen shoe.

I know way too much about him. Stalker.

She sighed.

Oh, and he was freakishly, devilishly, impossibly hot.

And single.

A muscle in his jaw ticked, but he remained otherwise motionless. “This isn’t a ‘dalliance’, Mother,” he said.

“It’s not.” Maggie tore her eyes off of him, flushing when his mother shot her a condescending look. “It’s so not.”

He shot her a narrow-eyed look.

She stared right back at him, and took a big gulp of wine.

The second he turned away, she put down her glass, swiped a napkin across her mouth, gently set her fork down, and decided to creep out while no one paid attention to her. If she had any luck—which she normally didn’t—she’d escape before whatever was about to happen here happened. World War Three, maybe.

Slowly, she stepped sideways to the left.