Worthy of Redemption Read online

  “It’s fine,” she said with a sigh.

  “You’ll have to save your partying for another time, Miss Whitman,” I said, turning my eyes back to my computer screen.

  “I suggest you stop making assumptions about me, Mr. Sterling,” she said. I looked up just in time to watch the door close behind her.

  *~~~*

  Monday morning as I walked into my office, Lily followed close behind me carrying my breakfast and coffee and my appointment book. The glasses were gone and her hair was down, but her skirt was shorter than what could be deemed work-appropriate, and the buttons on her light purple shirt looked as if they were about to pop off due to the pressure exerted by her breasts. It took great effort for me to tear my eyes away from those buttons and to look into her tired eyes.

  Her eyebrow was raised and I realized that she had caught me staring.

  “Would it be more convenient for you if I took my shirt off and worked in my bra?” she asked, setting my breakfast down on the desk.

  It would have been just as wise for me to ignore her question as it would have been for her not to ask it in the first place, but I didn’t always behave wisely.

  “Only if you’re wearing the black bra you had on last Friday,” I said, without cracking a smile or giving any indication that I was being funny.

  “You’re in luck,” she said, also not giving any indication of being humored. “I just happen to be wearing that very bra.”

  I almost looked at her chest again. I wondered if her nipples were still pierced and remembered the brief moment my hands had closed over her jeweled breasts, clad in probably the same bra we were speaking of.

  I shook myself of my thoughts and quickly sat down before she noticed my erection.

  “You look terrible,” I said. She looked like she hadn’t slept all weekend. “I hope you got more work done than partying.”

  Lily rolled her eyes and set my appointment book down on my desk with more force than necessary.

  “The work is complete, boss. You have a nine-thirty telephone conference with Nuland & Smith and a luncheon with Mangini at twelve-thirty. The company car will be ready for you at ten after.”

  “I’ll need you to accompany me on the Mangini luncheon, but you better drink plenty of coffee between now and then. I don’t want you looking as exhausted as you do now.”

  “Good idea,” she said, taking my coffee. She put the mug to her pretty mouth and took a long sip. She licked her plump lips, licking away the tiny drops of coffee that had been left there. It was an innocent action, but I had to quickly sit down to hide how it made me feel. She put my mug back on my desk and without a word walked out of my office.

  Holy shit.

  I picked up the mug and looked at the light coating of red lipstick that was left on one side. I took a sip where she had taken a sip, and it did nothing to help my erection. I quickly put the mug down and threw myself into my work in an attempt to shake Lily from my mind.

  At five minutes after noon, Lily met me in front of my office. She no longer looked exhausted. She appeared alert and full of energy.

  “You look better,” I told her as we headed to the elevators.

  “I took a nap,” she shrugged.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “You took a nap on company time?”

  “It was necessary. It’s not like I shagged my boss in his office on company time. That would be unnecessary.” She gave me a knowing look, forcing me to abandon the topic.

  In the elevator, Lily stepped close to me. Her breasts lightly brushed against me as she straightened my tie and smoothed my shirt. I inhaled her scent as she brushed off my jacket before she nodded approvingly and stepped away.

  “Do I meet your approval?” I asked dryly.

  “I hate your tie,” she said easily. “It looks like something my grandpa would wear, and he’s dead. It looks like an old dead man’s tie.”

  I looked down at my red and blue striped tie. Jessyca had given it to me more than five years ago. She was usually very good about fashion, but I had to agree with Lily. It looked like something I swiped out of a thrift store. I was used to wearing it and put it on out of habit. I owned very nice clothes, but I didn’t like to spend a lot of time matching shirts with pants or ties with suits. Pretty much anything I threw together without thought matched, even if it was hideous like my tie.

  On the way to the lobby, Pete from IT got on the elevator. Pete had been with the company for ten plus years, but I rarely spoke to him. I didn’t even know his last name or anything about him, but Lily seemed to quickly have made friends with the man.

  “Hey, Pete,” she chirped.

  Pete beamed down at Lily. I almost made a disgusted sound but stopped short.

  “Hi, Lily,” he said. His eyes flitted over her body. “You look great.”

  “Pete, I need something from you,” she said, exuding confidence.

  Pete’s eyes widened, along with his grin. “Anything, sweetheart.”

  “I need your tie.”

  “My what?” he asked. The poor sucker probably thought she was going to ask him out on a date. I almost snorted at the idea of gorgeous Lily going out with balding, pudgy Pete.

  “Your tie, babe,” she said, her fingers already loosening the knot around his neck.

  Both Pete and I were dumbstruck at Lily’s nerve. Not many women were able to trap a man in an elevator and force him to take off his tie without any promise of kinky play with the accessory.

  “Thank you, Pete. I’ll return it in a couple of hours,” she said as the elevator doors slid open.

  “Maybe I can buy you a beer after work and you can return it then,” Pete said with too much hope in his tone.

  “Sure,” she said, but I knew it wasn’t just an answer to shut him up as most women would do. I knew she would really have a beer with him in lieu of the borrowed tie. It was both impressive and disgusting.

  “You don’t have to have a drink with him,” I told her as I climbed in the car behind her. “I’ll pay him for the use of his tie.”

  She balanced herself on her knees, practically in my lap as her fingers hurriedly untied my tie.

  “I don’t mind,” she said, her warm sweet breath washing over my face. “Pete’s a nice guy.”

  “Pete thinks you’re going to be his girlfriend,” I snorted.

  “Pete is just lonely. His wife died a couple of years ago and his son just went away to college.”

  “I didn’t know he was ever married,” I said, feeling a little guilty for not knowing anything about the man.

  “You can learn a lot when you talk to other people about non-work related topics,” she said, meeting my eyes.

  Emmy had helped me to be more personable at one time, but the stresses of life at that time forced me to become introverted again. I wasn’t insensitive to the needs and problems of others. I have helped Sterling employees at my own expense and I often donated to charities, but I never struck up a conversation with the random Pete’s, discovering their trials and tribulations.

  I watched Lily’s face as she wrapped Pete’s tie around my neck and tied it. What were her trials and tribulations? She had spoken about having pain on her first day. Was it physical? Was it emotional, and if so, from whom? I wondered how much I could learn from her if I just asked. How much would she be willing to reveal? How much could I convince her to reveal if I reached my hand up her short skirt?

  The car stopped suddenly to avoid an accident. Reflexively, I grabbed Lily’s hip to keep her from slamming into the front seat. Even after the car continued on smoothly, I didn’t release her. I had not felt curves like hers since the last time I had the privilege of holding her. Her eyes locked with mine for a second before she put all of her focus into my tie.

  “Much better,” she murmured, smoothing my tie down my chest. I didn’t miss the fact that her hands paused over my pectorals and abs.

  I was forced to release her when she sat down on the other side of the car. Her skirt rode up
her thighs, revealing creamy, smooth skin. She tugged nervously on the hem, trying to cover herself. We were silent for the rest of the short trip. Lily stared out of her window and I stared at her, fantasizing about her thick thighs wrapped around my waist and her bare breasts pressed up against my bare chest.

  When we arrived at our destination, I got out ahead of her and offered her my hand to assist her out of the car. She hesitated, looking at my hand with her mouth slightly open. I urged her on with a quick, firm wave of my hand and she finally put her soft hand into mine. As she climbed out, her skirt rode impossibly further up her legs and I was rewarded with a glimpse of black, lacey panties before she stood up and adjusted her skirt. The October wind whipped her loose tendrils about her face, making her appear wild and uninhibited.

  I possessively put my hand on the small of her back and lead her inside the restaurant, hoping no one would notice how aroused this red headed beauty just made me.

  Chapter Six

  *~Lily~*

  “Marco, it’s nice to see you again.” Kyle was shaking hands with a man that must have been chiseled out of stone in the image of the gods.

  Mangini was around the six foot mark, with jet black hair, steel blue eyes, and a smile that made me stumble. Fortunately, no one noticed that I grabbed onto the back of a chair to keep myself from falling on my face in front of Mr. Wonderful.

  “Had I known you were going to bring a date, I would have brought my own,” Marco said, as his eyes fell on me.

  Kyle cleared his throat and his business smile faltered for a second. “This is my assistant Lily,” he said quietly.

  Marco’s eyebrows shot up as he looked at Kyle in amusement. “Oh, is our lunch going to be as serious as that, Kyle? You may have warned a friend that we were going to have a serious business meeting.” He looked away from Kyle and met my gaze. “Ciao, Bella,” he said in a smooth tone.

  I extended my hand for a handshake, but he engulfed my hand in one of his and brought it to his lips, never looking away from my eyes. Little shockwaves of energy shot up my arm. I’m not a girly girl by any means, but I couldn’t stop myself from smiling like a fool.

  "Ciao. Come stai?"

  His eyes widened in surprise. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kyle look at me with bewilderment at first, but then irritation.

  “Ora sono molto meglio,” Marco grinned.

  Yes, I’m much better now, too.

  “Why don’t we sit down?” Kyle suggested and then his mouth set in a firm line. He forced Marco to drop my hand by forcing his way between us. He pulled out my chair for me and gave me a glare that indicated that I was to sit down immediately. I took my seat and Kyle took the seat beside me.

  “How are things at Sterling Corp, Kyle?” Marco asked after we ordered our drinks.

  “Improving more each day,” Kyle answered with confidence. “We didn’t let a few bad apples spoil the whole bunch.”

  “One of those bad apples is your own father,” Marco challenged. “How are you handling that?”

  “I’m handling it,” Kyle answered tightly.

  “How are you doing at the company? At one point you were thought to be in on the whole conspiracy.”

  “You know that I wasn’t, Marco. You know what I did.”

  Marco thought about it for a moment as he tapped the table with his finger. I felt a little uneasy. Things had quickly gone from easy to intense in less than three minutes, and I really had no idea what they were talking about. I knew about Kyle’s ‘dad’ stealing money from the company and investors, and I had heard rumors that Kyle was somehow involved, but it never made since to me. Kyle had a place in the company while Walter Sterling not only lost his place in the company, but had done a little time for his deeds.

  “You saved thousands of jobs,” Marco acknowledged with a nod. I tried to hide my own surprise at that. I never heard that, not exactly. Now Kyle’s words from that long ago morning made some sense.

  “And I saved people like you a lot of money,” Kyle added.

  Marco nodded again. “Yes, you did. So, what do you want from me now?”

  “Some of that money I helped you to save,” Kyle grinned. I grinned because he grinned. It was one of the rarest sights I had ever seen.

  “I should have known when you showed up with the pretty assistant that you were going to reach into my pockets,” Marco laughed. “You have plenty of your own money, Sterling. Why do you need mine?”

  “I have a project you may be interested in,” Kyle said and leaned forward. “I want to develop affordable housing for working middle to lower income families.”

  I looked at him with bewilderment. I didn’t know that Kyle Sterling cared about where the people below his class lived.

  “What would I want with housing for the poor?” Marco spit out. “You’ll build them nice homes and they’ll wreck them. That’s what they do. It will become nothing but a hassle and a cesspool for drugs, crime, stupidity, teenage pregnancies and breeding more lower income children that will grow up to be like their disgusting parents.”

  The image of the man chiseled by the gods was obliterated as I glared at him.

  “I resent that,” I said sharply.

  “Lily!” Kyle snapped.

  “No, you’re not going to hush me,” I snapped back at him before turning back to Marco. “I resent your words.”

  “Have I insulted you, Lily?” Marco asked casually.

  “I grew up in low income housing. There have been more drugs and crimes in your high class society than there ever were in our development. My mother worked her ass off to care for me and my sister, and both of us are college educated and drug free.”

  “Then you and your sister are an exception,” Marco shrugged.

  “Why not make us the norm?” I challenged.

  “Lily, that’s enough,” Kyle whispered harshly in my ear.

  “Allow her to speak,” Marco said casually. “What do you mean make you the norm?”

  I took a deep breath before speaking to try and quell my anger and gather my words. I didn’t expect to have to do much talking at this meeting. I was there to look pretty, take notes, make appointments, and look pretty.

  “Look,” I started slowly. “I understand where you are coming from, I really do, but we were very fortunate. The proprietors of our development set very high standards for the tenants and held us accountable for our actions. Sure there were some problems, but nothing too crazy. The development was mostly occupied by working families who wanted more out of life, but the fact of the matter is not everyone can have ‘more.’ But they always worked for it. Maybe you can have the same type of community. There has to be standards and accountability and you cannot lower the standards or ease back on accountability. You can give people who are willing to work for ‘more’ that opportunity, and even if they never reach a higher place in life, they will definitely have laid the way for their children as my mother did for my sister and I.”

  Kyle stopped trying to get me to shut up and was now looking at me with interest. Marco gazed at me from across the table while his fingers continued to tap on the table. The waiter appeared to bring our drinks and take our orders, but none of us had looked at a menu yet. Marco sent him away without taking his eyes off of me.

  “Did you have a good childhood, Lily?” he asked.

  “Yes, despite living in a ‘cesspool of stupidity,” I answered sourly.

  “You’ve mentioned a sister and a mother, did you have a father?” Marco asked.

  Kyle shifted in his seat, but he didn’t stop this line of questioning.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked quietly.

  “I am trying to get an idea of what kind of people live in these developments,” he shrugged.

  “My father left us when my sister was only six months old. I was almost two. I don’t have any memory of him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Marco said sincerely.

  I glanced at Kyle who was now star
ing at his glass of iced tea with a distracted expression.

  “At least you have your mother and sister,” Marco said with a soft smile.

  “I only have myself,” I responded quietly and picked up my menu.

  Kyle was staring at me. I could feel his eyes boring into the side of my face, but he remained quiet.

  “In the end, I guess that is all we have,” Marco solemnly said.

  I nodded my agreement just as the waiter reappeared to take our orders.

  “What do I get out of making an investment into something like this?” Marco asked me and not Kyle after the waiter had gone. “If everyone is middle class to low income, how do I profit from such a thing?”

  “I’m not sure what Kyle had in mind,” I said. “This is his project not mine.”

  Kyle took his cue and jumped in. I relaxed into my seat and for the next two hours I sat back to enjoy the ride that was Kyle Sterling while he was talking business. He was animated, bright eyed, and enthusiastic about his proposal. Occasionally, the men would refer to me for my opinion. I didn’t see how my opinion mattered, but I gave it anyway. When I wasn’t talking, I was eating and drinking Malibu Sunrises. The bartender made them really well –not as well as me, but well enough.

  “I have to get back,” Marco said later after glancing at his watch. “I have another meeting. I would like to meet tonight for some drinks if you’re available. I love the Philadelphia night life. It’s unlike any other city in the world.”

  The two shared a knowing look before they each broke out in a grin.

  “Those were good times,” Marco said.

  “Yes, they were,” Kyle agreed.

  “We used to party pretty hard,” Marco explained to me. “Kyle always got more women than me, thanks to his ultimate dance moves.”

  My eyebrows shot up as I looked over at my typically moody boss. “You have dance moves?” I asked.

  He waved a hand. “That was a long time ago,” he said dismissively.

  “I’ll bet he still has them,” Marco grinned. “We will persuade him to dance for you tonight, Lily.”