Read Online One Night Forever (The Cinderella Chronicles) by Lisa Renée Jones - Free Book Online Page A

remote,
Lauren hit the button and ground her teeth in irritation. “Would
you please focus? I have a problem.”
    “ It can’t be
as bad as you’re making it.”
    “ What’s that
supposed to mean?” Lauren asked defensively.
    “ You take life
too seriously.”
    “ I have
to.”
    Cat snorted. “No, you do
not. What’s got you so worked up?”
    Eager to prove her point,
Lauren said, “Remember Matt?”
    “ As in the
only man you’ve spoken about who isn’t a part of the ’Red Hot
Secrets’ cast? How could I forget him?”
    “ He’s my new
boss.”
    Cat laughed into the
phone.
    “ What’s so
funny? This is a disaster!”
    “ A disaster?
Hardly. No food on the table. An earthquake. A tornado. These are
disasters. You don’t have a disaster.”
    “ Then what do
you call it?” Lauren demanded.
    “ Interesting,”
she said quickly.
    “ Are you
hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth?” Lauren said.
“The man is my boss. What in the hell am I going to do?” A pause.
“ He’s my
boss !”
    Cat laughed. “Do you
still want him?”
    “ He’s my boss .”
    “ Do you report
directly to him?’
    “ Not exactly,”
Lauren reluctantly admitted because clearly Cat had some
agenda.
    “ And do you
want him?”
    “ Cat—”
    “ You do. Okay.
Does he want you?”
    “ Stop
answering for me.”
    “ He does.
Good. What exactly is the problem? You aren’t his direct report.
Your relationship started before you were employed. It seems fairly
simple. Have a fling and get him out of your system.”
    “ Sometimes I
just don’t understand you,” Lauren said, reaching for the bag of
chocolate again. It seemed a better comfort than Cat.
    “ Look,” Cat
said, “it’s not a big deal. Keep it simple, keep it
private.”
    Lauren was silent a long
moment, trying to process her thoughts and Cat’s loudly spoken
opinions. The problem was she wasn’t sure her heart wasn’t already
involved. But she wasn’t about to admit that. Not even to
Cat.
    “ People have
office affairs?”
    Cat snorted. “Oh please,
honey, all the time. You really are naïve sometimes. Stop making it
so complicated.”
    A few minutes later
Lauren hung up the phone, but she didn’t feel any better than
before her talk with Cat. In fact, she felt worse. To think Matt
might want to have a heated little office affair with her, and then
pretend it didn’t happen later… Well, any way she sliced it, she
didn’t like it. Could she have an affair and then act like it had
never happened? Or even now, in public? She wasn’t sure she was
built that way. And it had been hard enough to forget Matt after
one night. She might never recover from an affair. Lauren reached
for the remote and flipped on the television, reaching in her bag
of candy, hoping to forget Matt for only a few minutes.
    A tall, dark,
and handsome hunk filled the screen. “I’m going to make love to you, Tara. I’m going to make you
never forget me.”
    Those had been Matt’s
words. Lauren hit the off button on the remote. She was really
learning to hate this show.
    * * * * *
    The next morning Lauren
had hardly had time to sit down at her desk when a knock sounded at
her door. “Come in,” Lauren said, trying to sound bubbly when she
felt anything but. She hadn’t slept. Fretting over the situation
with Matt had dominated her entire night. But she had awakened with
resolve to fight for her career. Today she would dig in and make an
impression based on her professional abilities.
    Celia appeared in the
doorway and offered Lauren a friendly smile. With her stood a tall,
blond Adonis-looking man Lauren recognized from the board meeting.
“Lauren,” Celia said, “this is Greg Marsh.”
    Greg nodded, and gave her
a really quite sexy, quite devastating, smile. If you liked his
type. Lauren didn’t. But Greg no doubt had plenty of women after
him. That was one of the things about her attraction to Matt. She
never went head over heels over a man. Except Matt.