Legally Binding (3 page)

A
fter another hour
of tedious work, Maisie got to thinking.

Dating the boss… She wasn’t against it, in principle. She’d had a fling with one of the managers at the call center right around when she’d started. They’d banged daily for a few months, until he took a better job eight hours away and then got a girlfriend.

But he hadn’t been her boss.

Jayne would be a problem… Jayne was gorgeous. Maisie decided to look her up in the directory, just to make sure.

It took some scrolling, but she found Jayne Torrabadella and couldn’t help noticing that Jayne was the only lawyer with the initials J.T.

Maisie thought about the sticky she’d thrown away, then shrugged it off. If it was important for Jayne to get that case, it would get sorted out.

And, yeah, she really was that stunning. It wasn’t fair.

But Jayne was one woman, and there were three bosses. Well, two, because Mr. Brennbach was off the table. Disappointment twisted in her gut, and regret had her heart fluttering. She ignored it all.

So, that left a boss for Maisie. Mr. Lattimore had been flirting with her before she crossed the line, so he was possibly interested. Mr. Banno, too. Maybe that was why he hadn’t revealed his coffee-throwing ogre side to her.

It deserved further investigation.

She was way overdue for a lunch break, so she wrapped up what she was doing, then went into the bathroom to wash her hands.

While she was in there, she unbuttoned the top of her short-sleeved blouse. The tiny bit of extra skin wouldn’t offend anyone, and maybe if she was a little sexier, the bosses would warm up to her.

After buying and inhaling a cloyingly sweet smoothie and a three-bean salad in a deli in the building’s lobby, Maisie returned to find several pieces of paper sitting on her keyboard.
Priority! Type these into BFA (business formation application) forms (6 pages) for Mr. Banno
, the attached sheet said.
Attention to detail, Maisie, or you can go home!

Obviously it was from Mrs. Donahue.

She typed and printed them. The note hadn’t said what to do with them once she was finished, and Mrs. Donahue was at a late lunch, breathing fire at some poor waitress, Maisie imagined. She decided to take it to Mr. Banno’s office.

His assistant was away, so Maisie approached the open door.

Mr. Banno was seated at his desk, engrossed in something he was reading.

The office layout and furnishings were almost exactly like Mr. Lattimore’s, but without the plants, and the grandfather clock was a lighter shade of wood. Mr. Banno had a phone, a laptop, and several folders on his desk.

An additional chair was beside the credenza.

She knocked, and he looked up. The corner of his mouth twitched; he was happy to see her, though doing his best to hide it. A few strands of hair had fallen into his eyes, and Maisie wanted to climb onto his lap and brush them away.

“I’ve got your BFA forms,” she said quickly, hoping he hadn’t guessed what she was thinking.

“That was fast.”

“What can I say? I’m fast.” Then she realized what she’d said.

She froze. Geez, they were going to think she was some kind of horny pervert. Which she kinda was, but this time it really had been an accident.

But Mr. Banno was smiling. She hadn’t offended him.

He motioned for her to enter, and he watched as she approached his desk. She tried not to sway her hips too much. He wasn’t staring, wasn’t being at all inappropriate, but deep down she knew: he was attracted to her.

Forget Mr. Lattimore. Former grunge guitarist or not, he was too uptight, and anyway Mr. Banno was hotter.

She handed him the papers.

“One moment,” he said. “You can run them back to Mrs. Donahue.” He quickly flipped through the pages, scrawling his signature and the date. He was left-handed, she noticed, the kind who curled their fingers and wrists around their pens and seemed to write backward. It was inelegant and thoroughly charming.

“And tell Mrs. Donahue that she’ll need to arrange dinner for eight people tonight.”

“Which restaurant… I mean… I guess she knows, or you would have said.”

“Dinner will be here, but she’ll know.” He handed her the pages. “Actually, if you want some overtime on your first day…” He shook his head sharply, the corners of his mouth turning down. “Strike that.”

She wanted overtime! “But—”

“Ethan will be there.”

Oh.

“That’s all I need for now. Thank you.”

As she walked down the empty hall, she reordered the papers. One of them was missing a signature, so she turned around and went back.

Mr. Banno frowned when she entered. “Sorry,” she said. “You forgot something.”

“Nonsense,” he said with a playful smirk. “I never forget anything.”

“Never?”

He raised his eyebrows. Oh, he was definitely flirting. “Never, Maisie. But sometimes I use invisible ink.” He motioned for her to approach.

He didn’t seem so bad. She wondered if Mrs. Donahue had made up the coffee thing to scare her. She seemed the type.

Maisie placed the paper on the desk, and then, her finger on the empty line where Mr. Banno was to sign his name, she skated the paper forward.

She had to lean over to do it. The long chain and heart pendant tumbled out of her blouse to pool on the desktop.

The movement caught Mr. Banno’s attention. He wasn’t staring down her shirt… until he was.

With an abrupt motion, he signed his name. “I’m glad you came back. It’ll save me a phone call. You’ll bring my coffee today, in half an hour.” He turned away as if he couldn’t deal with the temptation of her breasts trembling in his face. “That will be all for now.”

She wondered if his cock was hard. Oh god, she really hoped it was. She hoped he was going to grab hand lotion and tissues and head into the bathroom for some self-love.

What she’d done had felt so naughty. It wasn’t like her.

Well, it wasn’t
unlike
her, either. She’d always been forward. Men usually flirted with her, and she’d come to expect it. Being ignored sucked, but now she felt a lot better. She didn’t even mind Mrs. Donahue’s snippiness as she showed Maisie how to put together a tray of coffee for Mr. Banno.

But when she brought it to him, he ignored her.

“Mrs. Donahue said two tablespoons of cream, right?” she asked, carefully placing the gleaming silver tray atop the credenza.

He didn’t look up from his work. “If I wanted something different, I’d tell you.”

So much for Mr. Banno being the approachable partner.

She dumped the cream into the coffee and placed the mug on the desk.

He reached for it, then paused. “The sugar?”

“Oh… um…” Using the stupid little tongs, she picked up one white square. It glittered like frozen snow.

It slipped out of the tongs, slid across the desk and disappeared over the side.

“Fuck!” she said, then clamped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

His eyes were like ice. “Pick it up.”

She stared.

“Now.”

Springing into action, she hurried around the desk and crouched.

Mr. Banno used the side of one polished black shoe to nudge the sugar cube under the desk.

Confused, she sat back on her heels and looked up at him. Being on her knees in front of her boss felt funny. It made her mind go to strange, forbidden places, to things that could never happen in real life.

“Get it,” he ordered, sliding back with his chair and making space for her.

Oh, this was humiliating. To retrieve it, she had to crawl under the desk, her palms and knees scraping across the carpet. Her skirt was uncomfortably tight over her ass and the backs of her thighs.

There was a paper clip on the floor, so she picked that up, too, then scrambled to her feet.

“Fix your shirt,” Mr. Banno said.

She looked down and saw how the fabric had bunched up under one of her breasts, pulling the neckline to the side and exposing an inappropriate swell of cleavage.

She quickly straightened herself out, then dumped the sugar into the trash. She kept the paper clip, though.

“Maisie?” Mr. Banno said. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I… I’m sorry. Did you need something?”

“My sugar.”

So she had to walk back and do the sugar ritual again, but this time she got close with the bowl and didn’t screw up.

Mr. Banno picked up his pen and began writing something, like she wasn’t even there, and Maisie took the opportunity to flee the room.

“What the hell was that?” she murmured as she plopped down at her desk and tossed the paper clip into a drawer.

Then she realized.

That was payback.

A smile crept across her face.
Game on.

A
n hour later
, she had another excuse to return to Mr. Banno’s office. Technically Mrs. Donahue was the one sending her, but Maisie had angled for it by asking several times if there wasn’t an errand she could be running, to avoid sitting for too long.

But not only was his door closed, his assistant—Maisie didn’t remember her name—was sitting at her desk.

“I need to speak with Mr. Banno,” Maisie said.

The secretary’s gaze dipped toward the folder Maisie was carrying.

“It’s about the Easton case. Mrs. Donahue said to make sure Mr. Banno saw this subpoena right away. I’m supposed to bring it back to her.”

The secretary shrugged, then picked up the phone. “Something that needs your attention,” the secretary said. “Yes, sir.” To Maisie, she said, “Go on in.”

“Thank you. They really run us ragged here, huh?”

“You’re telling me.” She turned back to her work.

Maisie entered the office. Mr. Banno might have been surprised to see her, but he turned away so quickly that she couldn’t see the look on his face. “What is it?” he asked.

“A copy of a subpoena that came in for Easton, about some documents related to his dry cleaning business.”

“Bring it here.” Mr. Banno stood, and she gave him the paperwork. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing vaguely at the chair beside the credenza. “This will take a few minutes.”

It was going to be more difficult to seduce him with a desk between them and her stuck in a chair, which was maybe his intention.

But Maisie refused to give up so easily. She sat gracefully and crossed her legs, knowing her tight skirt would highlight the outline of her shapely thighs. She swung her foot a little, letting her high-heeled shoe dangle from her toes.

And then the shoe slipped off and hit the floor with a quiet thump.

Mr. Banno glanced over, but he didn’t say anything.

Maisie delicately removed the other shoe, then stood and went to pour herself some water from the tray on the credenza. She couldn’t think of a good reason to bend over, but she very much wanted to give Mr. Banno the image of her curvy ass, so, carrying her water, she undulated over to the coffee table and bent at the waist to study the magazines on offer.

Nothing juicy, just law journals and reviews. It was a bit of a disappointment.

“Put your shoes back on,” Mr. Banno said matter-of-factly.

She sashayed back to the chair and wiggled into her heels. Mr. Banno watched, his face expressionless.

“Am I allowed to choose a magazine?”

“If it’ll keep you from moving around and distracting me.” He shifted away from her.

But she’d caught a glimpse of what he was trying to hide: an obvious tent in his pants.

She’d only gotten a peek… Too bad.

She chose a magazine at random and couldn’t help glancing back to see if Mr. Banno was watching her.

He wasn’t, but he’d hooked a finger behind the knot of his tie. She watched hungrily as he tugged it a little looser.

She slipped open another button of her blouse, then sat primly in the chair. Mr. Banno was marking notes all over the pages she’d brought.

Holding the magazine up so he couldn’t see what she was doing, she slid a finger into her shirt, then her bra.

It wasn’t easy to pull the cups down so that her nipples were bare under the shirt, but she managed it. When she was done, she took the magazine back to the coffee table.

“Finished,” Mr. Banno said, holding out the marked-up papers and the folder.

And then he saw her.

His eyes went from her face right to her chest, where her heavy breasts jiggled with every step as she returned to him. The fabric of her shirt slid over her nipples, the stimulation turning them into hardened little peaks.

Maisie knew men were visual creatures. Give them the sight of an attractive woman who might be interested in sex, and it was difficult to get their attention on anything else.

Mr. Banno was attractive, successful, and wealthy. There was no way he didn’t get as much pussy as he wanted.

But he probably wasn’t used to women trying to seduce him at work.

“Will that be all?” she asked innocently.

Mr. Banno swallowed hard and looked toward the door. “Um, yes. Thank you, Maisie.”

She felt his eyes caressing her ass as she walked out.

A smile of triumph made her cheeks ache. She held the papers in front of her chest until she’d fixed her bra.