He was going to explode. Nick felt as if he couldn't fit into the suit he was wearing due to the helplessness he was feeling. That girl was shameless. And she had left him unable to say anything else! Him!

He went to his desk and furiously pressed the intercom button on the phone.

“Oli!” That scream through the phone made the girl jump in her seat.

“Yes?”

“Get me Valeria Williams' contract right now!”

“Right away, sir.”

What Oli found when she opened the office door was far worse than a caged lion, so she put down the contract and almost ran out.

Nick was fuming out of his ears. That insolent... shameless... brazen... girl! How dare she threaten to sue him! He just felt like choking her with his own hands... like this... around that neck... just above the chest... that chest...

“Fuck, Nick, get a grip on yourself!” he chastised himself internally and sat down calmly, very calmly, to review that damned contract. Ten minutes later, his shout came over the intercom again:

“Oli!”

“Aaaah!” The girl was so startled that involuntarily threw her coffee up in the air. “What... what's wrong, sir?”

“Call my mother! Tell her I need to meet her right away!”

“Of course, sir.”

Five hours later, Nicholas Bennet, Nick, Nicky, hadn't done any work at all. He had just paced the floor in his office until he had finally stormed out like a tornado. Without getting a response from his mother, he preferred to leave early or else he would end up doing something stupid.

At least that gave Valeria the rest of the day to relax, get to know the rest of her colleagues better, and realize that no one was paying any real attention to the few who were working in the lingerie department.

She arrived ready for battle the next day, but to her surprise, the CEO had moved his meetings that day to one of the production centers, so she wouldn't have to run into him. It was better that way; she would be able to design uninterrupted and then take Alice to her little friend's birthday.

Nick, on the other hand, had had a rough night, the meetings had been worse, and at four o'clock in the afternoon, he set off in pursuit of his mother across town. Layla was an eccentric woman to put it nicely. Everywhere he went he was informed she had already left, until finally, almost at dusk, she answered his call.

“Would it kill you to talk to me?” he asked in frustration.

“That depends on what you want to talk about,” Layla replied. “I will text you my location. I'll wait for you.”

Nick looked up at the roof of the car as he mustered all the patience he could and connected his cell phone to the car's GPS so it would follow the address she had sent him. If he was already angry, when he stopped the car in front of a Burger King, he almost had a full-blown heart attack. He walked in, dodging the children who were running and laughing all over the place and especially a couple of clowns only God knew why they were there.

“Do you want to tell me what the hell we're doing here?” Nick protested, sitting down across from his mother, who looked like an anachronistic figure in that restaurant wearing a cocktail dress and stilettos.

“I felt like eating a hamburger. Don't I have the right to?” Layla asked, shrugging.

“Listen, that new girl you hired, I want her out of the company,” he bluntly blurted out.

“Valeria? Why? Have you seen her designs? They're fantastic!”

“I don't care about her designs!”

“Why not? You run a design company... what else could you care about?” asked his mother in an innocent tone.

“She's a very unpleasant woman!” Nick grunted, pushing away the little tray of hamburger and fries his mother had bought for him as well.

“Well, I thought she was a very nice girl... but if you don't like her, you can tell her right now that she’s fired.” Layla shrugged again, and Nick wrinkled his brow, not understanding what she meant until ten seconds later, he saw Valeria enter the door of the restaurant.

He would have yelled at his mother for setting him up, but seeing her arrive with a little girl by the hand was too much of an impression for him. Valeria looked very young, twenty-two, maybe twenty-three, and that little girl looked five or six.

She froze in the doorway when she saw them, but Alice tugged on her hand when she saw her little friend.

“Mom, can I go with Amy?”

Valeria looked at her a little nervously. Alice always called her “mom” when they were around other children. At the first school where she had been enrolled, the children had treated her differently because she was an orphan, so when she had started elementary school, Alice had started calling her “mom” to feel the same as the others. At first, it had bothered Valeria that the other kids were cruel just because of that, but eventually, she had understood that they were children, not small adults, so she couldn't judge them the same way. Alice could call her “grandma” if that made her happy.

“Yes, sweetheart, go,” she allowed, handing her the gift for Amy.

She took a deep breath and walked over to the table where her bosses were.

Nick's surprise turned to understanding and then to annoyance. Valeria had made it clear to him that she didn't have a partner; he wasn't surprised she was a single mom. After all, it was normal for women like her to have children out of wedlock. God knows if she even knew who the girl's father was!

“Mr. and Mrs. Bennet,” Valeria greeted. Layla shook her hand and Valeria didn't even bother to extend it to Nick.

“Are you following us?” Nick growled at her rebuff.

“In case you haven't noticed, a little girl's birthday is being celebrated, and I came to bring my own. You're the one who's completely out of place here,” she said, pointing around and then at him.

“And my mother isn't?” Nick replied just to upset her.

“Mrs. Layla would look good even on a bicycle. You do know what that is, right? That two-wheeled thing we poor people ride around... and those of us who eat at Burger King?” she taunted him, seeing that he had pushed the food away.

She picked up one of his fries and popped it into her mouth with a suggestive gesture.

“Mrs. Bennet, good to see you. Mr. Bennet... don't get an indigestion.” She said goodbye with a mischievous smile and went to join Alice and the other birthday moms.

Nick didn't say a word as she left. She was wearing jeans, flat sandals, a blouse that showed her back out, and her hair in a naughty ponytail. She was a flirt of the worst kind!

“Did you know she was coming?” Nick said to his mother in an accusatory tone.

“Maybe... maybe I heard her mention it... I don't remember,” his mother replied nonchalantly.

“That woman is dangerous! She threatened to sue me!”

“She can't do that!” Layla exclaimed indignantly.

“For wrongful termination, no less!” added Nick, furious.

“Oh, well... she can do that,” Layla shrugged. “Unless you found her naked on your desk, there's no reason to fire her. She's an excellent designer!”

“Oh please! She went to public school...”

“Make sure you don't remind her of that or you'll do worse than me,” his mother warned him, but Nick's frustration only grew stronger with that conversation, so he got up without even saying goodbye.

He walked with determination towards Valeria and lifted her out of the chair by pulling on her arm. Valeria stumbled after him, her expression surprised, as he pushed her into the restaurant's only bathroom and walked in behind her. And suddenly Nick found himself less than half a meter away from Valeria and looked around realizing they could barely move.

“This is a small-town Burger King restroom, Mr. Bennet,” she hissed. “There's barely enough room to do what you're usually here to do. The question is: What did you bring me here to do, Mr. Bennet?”

“What are you up to with my mother?” Nick growled at her in a threatening voice, and Valeria clenched her fists.

“I’m not up to anything with your mother. I came here for a birthday,” she replied angrily, “and I'm not particularly liking the idea of you harassing me.”

“Me harassing you?” Nick scoffed. “Why on earth would I harass a woman like you?”

“Well, upsetting me at work is one thing, Mr. Bennet, but we're not in the company and you dragged me to this place in front of everyone,” Valeria replied defiantly. “How about I scream and see whether or not the people outside think you're harassing me? What will the press print if someone says that the honorable CEO of Bennet Designs locked one of his employees in a public restroom?”

“No one would believe that!”

“Then let's find out.”

She opened her mouth and took a breath to scream... but suddenly, she had Nick's palm covering her lips and was crushing her with his body against one of the walls.

“Don't you dare! Are you out of your mind?” he scolded her harshly, until he realized that he could feel Valeria's whole body against his, her gasping breath, her breasts, the dangerous curve of her hips... and he couldn't stop his breathing from picking up speed as well at having her so close.

He slowly removed his hand and saw that her lips were trembling. She almost looked harmless. Almost. But that look was a weapon of mass destruction. Nick felt that desire boiling inside him and pulled back as she breathed heavily.

“I'm going to pay you to leave,” he said fiercely and Valeria's gaze filled with determination.

“I assure you that one day soon, you are going to want to pay me to stay!”

And that felt to Nick like the worst of challenges.

“Tomorrow we'll see. We'll see.”