Chapter 29

Mrs. Santos took Octavia’s bag and left her clutching the laptop case, staring around her at the high ceilings, the massive frames on the walls containing artwork she was sure cost more than some houses.

The gigantic staircase at the end of the room probably led to the hundreds of rooms contained in the house.

Mrs. Santos reappeared. “Mr. Kentworth asked that you be taken directly to him when you arrived. This way.”

Octavia followed Mrs. Santos down the hall and through another set of doors. She had to stop herself from gaping at everything around her.

The shiny tiling, the ten-foot-tall fountain in the foyer sending a silent curtain of water over a great obsidian slab of rock, the midcentury modern décor set in various corners.

Eventually, Mrs. Santos came to another set of double doors, and she pressed a button on the intercom cleverly set into the slate-gray walls on the side of the doors.

“Ms. Octavia here for you, sir,” Mrs. Santos said.

Raemon’s voice came through. “Send her in.”

Mrs. Santos smiled encouragingly and gestured to the door.

“Can I get you something to drink?” she asked before Octavia went in.

“No…no thanks,” Octavia managed to say.

Mrs. Santos gave her a final smile, then walked away. Octavia stood before the door without moving. Then she swallowed and grasped the handle of the door, sliding it open.

The room was large and mostly bare. A view of the distant city lights came through the rows of sliding glass doors on one end of the room.

The rest of the space was moderately illuminated by the wall lamps blending in with the geometric shapes on the walls.

At first, Octavia thought she was looking at strange kinds of furniture before she realized it was all gym equipment that was scattered around the space.

She heard the clang of metal and turned to the side of the room where the sound came from, and she saw Raemon.

He was just setting a barbell with several iron disks stacked on each side back onto the rack above his head. Once the enormous load was secured, he stood from the bench he had been lying on.

This time Octavia could not keep herself from gaping. Raemon Kentworth stood several feet before her, bare-chested, his skin glistening with sweat under the light.

Sierra was right. The man had an impressive set of abs.

He stood at an angle to her, unwinding a long white strip of cloth from his left wrist, but even the sliver of abdominals Octavia could see seemed to ripple in the light.

Her eyes trailed down from his chest and took in the sculpted pectoral muscles and the double column of rows beneath them.

The swell of his biceps pulsed with the unwinding motion of his hands, the thick flesh of his arms bursting with power from his slightest moves.

She even let her eyes trail down his waist, where she observed the lower half of his body clothed in rust-red basketball shorts, all the way down to his toned, bulging calves.

And the raven black of his name-brand gym shoes (she didn’t know what the brand was, but she knew they were a brand you were supposed to know).

~The paparazzi does not do his body justice,~ she thought.

“Octavia.” Raemon’s deep, resounding voice cut through her thoughts.

“Huh? What?” Octavia said, her eyes snapping back up to his face.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Raemon asked. He grabbed a towel hanging from the weight rack near him and strode over to where Octavia stood.

“Um…no,” Octavia said. Her eyes were unusually wide as she forced herself to keep them on his face.

But that glistening body was right in front of her. If she just reached her hand out, she’d have those rock-hard abs on her fingertips.

Raemon sighed. “Why do I have to repeat myself with you so much today? Now listen—”

He stopped, taking in Octavia’s expression, and then looked down at her with a quizzical stare. “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“Why are you making that face? Is something wrong?”

Octavia dropped her gaze to the floor. She let her eyes take their time on the way down, though.

“What are you looking at?” Raemon demanded.

Octavia looked back up into his face. “Well…actually, you,” she said frankly.

“Excuse me?”

“Your body, to be precise,” Octavia said. “You know, you’re actually… really hot.”

He was regarding her with a static, inscrutable expression. Seconds of dead silence ticked by, during which neither one of them moved or spoke.

“I’m flattered, assistant,” he said finally in a monotone.

Octavia shrugged. “You asked.”

“And I suppose I should have expected that kind of an answer,” he said. “Hand me the laptop.”

Octavia held out the device toward him. He reached for it. His hand brushed against Octavia’s knuckles.

She felt a rush of something sparking from the point on her skin where they touched and rushing up into her body. It was somewhat alarming.

Did she imagine it, or did his hand take an unnecessarily long amount of time curling over her fingers as he made a move to take the computer from her?

Each finger of his over her own sent the same thrills through her body.

He was staring into her eyes with the same inscrutable expression. But there was something lurking behind his electrifying gaze.

His hand was now completely over her own, his fingers curled around hers and pressing down.

It was gentle, the lightest touch, but she felt as if there was a fire beneath that deceptive gentleness. A need, a desire to clench her hand in his.

A desire to clench more of her than just her hand too. And something in his eyes made it seem like that was exactly what he wanted to do. Like that was what he was going to do.

Octavia suddenly loosened her grip on the computer and pulled her hand back to her side. Her eyes did not leave his face, so she noted the change in his own when she did.

At least, she thought there was a change. To the casual observer, nothing had changed in his face. An employee had handed a sleek, silver laptop over to her boss—rather slowly, for some reason.

It was nothing but an exchange between two people who maybe needed to work on their motor skills.

“I’ll just be going then,” Octavia said.

“Not yet,” Raemon said, walking past her to the door.

Octavia whirled around as he went past her. “What else do you need me here for?”

He opened the door, letting the light from the hallway lamps flood into the room.

“Until I’ve gone over the files, you can’t leave. You compiled them. If I have questions, you need to be here to answer them.”

Octavia dragged her feet as she marched after him. “Dammit. Can’t you just do that over the phone?”

“Phone calls can be intercepted.”

“Can’t you do it tomorrow?”

“These need to be sent off to start production tomorrow morning.”

Octavia groaned. “Can I at least get some coffee?”

“Kitchen,” Raemon said. “Head down that hall and take the first door on your right. Mrs. Santos will have left by now, but I think you should be able to figure out a coffee maker.”

Octavia gave him a mock smile of gratitude. “Thanks.”

“Come right back here when you’re done,” Raemon said, pointing to another door in the opposite direction.

“Yeah, yeah,” Octavia said dismissively, heading to the kitchen.

Thirty minutes later, Octavia strolled into the well-furnished study room Raemon had directed her to with a carton of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other.

Raemon was sitting at a desk centered in the room, a deep gray that matched the floor-to-ceiling shelves surrounding the room, holding countless volumes of books.

The sweat was gone from his body, a subtle scent of soap replacing it, and instead of only basketball shorts, Raemon wore dark denim jeans and a long-sleeved, light-blue shirt.

The computer was open before him, and he was staring at the screen with a single-minded intensity.

Octavia sat down in one of the two forest-green leather barrel chairs in front of his desk and casually swung her legs over one side of the armrest, resting her back against the other.

“I thought you were getting coffee,” Raemon said without looking up from the screen.

“I was, but then I found all this ice cream,” Octavia said. “Anyway, it’s mocha. That should keep me awake.”

She dipped her spoon into the carton and heartily licked the glob of dark-brown iced creaminess. “You have just about every flavor in there. You must eat ice cream every night or something.”

“I never eat ice cream,” Raemon said.

“Then why is your freezer full of it?”

“Mrs. Santos does the shopping.”

“So…she eats all that ice cream?”

“No, it’s her job to keep the fridges full.”

“But…if you don’t eat it, and she doesn’t…who does?”

“My overly curious employees obviously.”

Octavia took another spoonful of ice cream.

“There was a lot more in your fridge too. And loads in your pantry. I bet you have enough to feed an army in here. What about the frozen pizzas? Do you eat those?”

“No.”

“The cereal?”

“No.”

“The crab cakes?”

“No.”

“The soup?”

“No.”

“The pudding cups?”

At this, Raemon looked up. “Pudding cups?”

Octavia grinned. “Ha, I just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Don’t worry, Mrs. Santos didn’t taint your kitchen with pudding cups.”

Raemon’s eyes went back to the screen.

“Don’t see what you’d have against pudding cups, though,” Octavia said.

“Pudding cups are for kids.”

“I love pudding cups!”

“Naturally.”

“So what do you eat?” Octavia asked, ignoring his comment.

“Whatever François—my personal chef—prepares. That is, whenever I am here for a meal. Which is rarely.”

“So all that food just gets thrown out?”

“Why are you so concerned with my groceries?”

“As a former starving college student, and more recently a scrimping-and-pinching unemployed, coffee-shop digital nomad, I can’t stand the thought of food waste,” Octavia said.

“Especially ice cream. That’s just barbarian.”

“Well, relax. I believe the staff eats whatever is in the kitchen when I don’t.”

That did console Octavia. She went back to her ice cream and didn’t say anything more. Raemon continued to stare at the screen, going through hundreds of lines of code.

Occasionally, his furrowed brows would knit even closer, he’d mouth silent words, and then type in a series of prompts on the keyboard. Gradually, he went through the majority of the code.

He glanced up, intending to ask Octavia about the format of a particular file, but the sight before him halted the words in his mouth.

No wonder she had been so quiet. She was still spread out on the chair, but she was fast asleep. Her arms were crossed over her middle, her head leaning against the edge of the chair.

One hand still clutched the carton of ice cream, from which gooey brown liquid was dribbling onto her sweater.

Her even, heavy breathing was the only sign of life given off by her body, that and the small trickle of drool that was inching its way from one corner of her open mouth.

Raemon shook his head wordlessly and reached for the phone on the desk.

“Yosef,” he said softly into the receiver, “you may leave now. Octavia won’t need a ride home tonight.

“And you will have the day off tomorrow. Matter of fact, take the rest of the week. You can get ready for your trip.”

After setting the phone back in its nest, Raemon rounded the desk to where Octavia sat. He lifted the carton of melting ice cream out of her hands and set it aside.

Then he slid his arms around her body. Slowly, he lifted her up out of the chair. As he carried her out of the study and up the stairs, she didn’t so much as stir.