Page 3 of Boss of the Year

This was what sex was like? Demeaning talk interspersed with bad TV jingles and bodily fluids? Impressions of wounded animals while testing the limits of the furniture?

I didn’t feel like I’d was missing out.

Maybe that’s just what sex was like withher, I told myself as the thumping and grunting went on. It had to be different with someone you had a real connection with. Someone that maybe you could love. Daniel had a deeper side to him, a side no one else saw but me (albeit, from afar). It wouldn’t be like that between us.

Would it?

“Snap!” squealed—oinked?—the woman. “Crackle! POP, baby!”

I frowned. Daniel’s guest had moved on to cereal slogans.

“Fuck!” Daniel seemed to have forgotten the rest of his vocabulary.

I took it as a good sign. If he felt something for this woman, he’d be capable of saying more. Right?

“Are you gonna come?” the woman asked. “I want that milk, Daddy. It does a bodygoooooood.”

Ewwwwwww.

I clapped my hands over my ears. The woman’s moans were still audible, but at least her words weren’t quite as clear. Or graphic. Or plagiarized, for that matter.

Even through my palms, I could hear when Daniel gave a great shout. The woman’s final squeal genuinely made me wonder if a fire alarm had gone off in at the party.

Eventually, their shouts died to murmurs. Murmurs turned to imperceptible conversation. The vibration of a toilet flushing, followed by a sink running, told me they were up and moving around. I decided my ears were safe.

Besides, if Daniel came out of the bathroom and realized he’d made a horrible mistake, I wanted to hear it. Maybe he’d take a look at the impossibly beautiful, probably injected and surgically enhanced blonde in his bed, remember that her best attempt at dirty talk came from nineties TV jingles, and decide he was ready to settle down with a real woman at last.

Preferably one who was five-foot-one, terribly near-sighted, and had never met a cardigan she didn’t love.

The bathroom door opened.

Please be bad. Please be bad. Please be bad.

“Honey, if I’d known you gave head like a Hoover, I would have done this years ago,” Daniel said with a chuckle.

Dammit.

“God, Daniel, you are such a lush. Wediddo this years ago, or have you forgotten Jemma and Oliver’s wedding?”

“Oh, right… Well, that’s what an open bar of grappa does to my brain. Won’t be forgetting this time, I promise.”

“We should probably get going.” The woman sniffed, sounding unimpressed.

How dare she? After the way he had obviously blown her mind?

Frankly, I was miffed on Daniel’s behalf.

He didn’t seem to notice. “So soon? I was thinking round two was in order.”

I shoved my face into my hands. Oh, God, please,no.

“Maybe later. Robbie’s party starts at eleven. Do you think your mother will be mad if we ditch her birthday?”

“Mom’s three sheets to the wind. She wouldn’t notice if I drove the Rolls through the great room windows right now. Hold on, babe. I need to change.”

I froze. Holy crap, he was coming inhere. A post-coital Daniel Lyons was about to find the assistant cook, with whom he’d shared maybe five whole conversations, buried in his closet and clutching his towel like a stalker.

Out of instinct, I threw the towel over my head. Because that would hide me.