Page 106 of Family Affair

“Aaron, I’m just a witness! Why are you doing this?”

But she knew. Aaron couldn’t overcome the fact that Coco was smarter, better educated, and more experienced than him. That never ceased to eat him up from inside out.

“Your negative and snobbish attitude finally caught up with you.”

There was an attitude problem, all right: Coco wasn’t a butt kisser. Aaron, on the other hand, fully expected her to smooch his behind every time he turned around. Their relationship had been doomed from the start.

There was no saving this job.

She turned around and went to her desk to pack.

Aaron followed, ranting about disrespect, and knowing one’s place on the totem pole, and projects, and management, and all the other things she had heard from him before but had never paid close attention to.

She didn’t now. Tuning him out, she emptied a box containing reams of paper and filled it with the few personal belongings she had in her office.

Aaron’s radio-like stream of lectures slowed down and stopped.

Coco raised her head to see what muted him, and found him staring at her chest where the neck of her blouse got pulled down from hefting the box to reveal the top of her right breast. The edge of her bra was showing.

To add insult to injury, her little manager decided to ogle her breasts after firing her.

“You don’t have to wait for me, Aaron. By all means, go home. I’ll find my way out.” She adjusted her clothes.

His face reddened at being caught staring. “Our management trusts me to see this unpleasant business to the end. I’ll see you out.”

Aaron didn’t just want to have her kicked out; he wanted to be the one to do the honors.

If this was how he drew satisfaction in life, she pitied him.

Finally ready to go, Coco picked up her half-empty box and took the last look around the office. Despite the harsh reality of being unemployed, she wouldn’t miss it.

A small frown descended on Aaron’s face. “You really laid it on with a trowel at your job interview. Who would’ve thought you’re a real ball buster?”

She gave him a look that she usually reserved for worms and pesky rodents. “You’ve no balls for me to bust, Aaron. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Oh, I have balls, just like any other man. I never showed them to you, treated you like a lady. Maybe it’s time you realized I’m more than my suit and tie.”

“Am I supposed to swoon at this corny line? You sound like a second-rate actor from a cheesy B movie.”

“Witch.” Aaron held the door open for her. “After you.”

She ignored him and brushed past, hefting the box. Aaron’s hand might’ve skimmed her waist, but surely she imagined it.

She reached to press the elevator button, but he beat her to that, saying “Allow me” in that saccharine tone. He pressed the button, and at the same time his other hand settled smack in the center of Coco’s butt and his finger dipped ever so slightly into her crack through the thin material of her skirt.

Her astonishment knew no bounds. “Aaron, what are you doing?” she sputtered. “Get your hand away from my behind, right now!”

She moved a step away from him, but not before he gave her a little rub.

“I bet you invite those dodgy Sheffield guys to massage you in all kinds of places. What if I can do a better job, hmm?”

The scene where Aaron massaged her in any place belonged in a fiction horror tale where lizardly aliens with dandruff and bad breath abducted unsuspecting heroines and performed unspeakable acts on them. Coco certainly had no plans to make this tale a reality.

“You touch me again, I’ll break your glasses,” she warned him.

The elevator arrived and they got in. She strategically backed her butt into the farthest corner, pressing it to the wall and making sure she and Aaron faced each other. He made her skin crawl, and she broke out in goosebumps.

Big mistake. Her nipples puckered and Aaron’s eyes got glued to her chest.