Illicit Affairs by Holly Dixon
Thirty-Five
Monday had creptup on Ava before she had a chance to rationalise the predicament she was in. No matter how bitter the pill was going to be to swallow, she had to somehow approach Nate and end the affair before it was too late. She was already in far too deep with him.
Tired and drained of motivation, she leaned forward in the staff kitchen and placed her lunch into the fridge. However, when a hand abruptly smacked across her behind, she shot upright with a sharp yelp as she whipped around to face the culprit.
“Nate!” Ava swatted his arm, pointing a warning finger at the dark and mischievous smile he beamed down at her. “Have you lost your mind?” she hissed, pulling him aside away from the doorway that looked out onto the busy department. “Not at work!”
“Good morning to you too, Ms. Archer.” He chuckled a husky noise by her ear, his breath tickling her helix and sending pleasurable shivers down her spine that she tried and failed to ignore. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you all weekend.” It was the truth. Even after their countless rounds of sex during the weekend, his brain refused to switch off from her.
“That’s lovely,” Ava faltered as she was cornered up against the kitchen counter by him. “However, can we not do this here?” Her blues darted back and forth between the doorway and Nate’s earthy eyes that were turning into dark forests.
“Did you miss me?” he asked as he placed two hands on either side of her onto the counter, boxing her into his embrace and obscuring the exit from her line of sight.
“What?” She squinted up at his whimsical expression that held a genuine level of curiosity to it. “Yes, of course I did, but we should really talk later wh—”
“I missed this.” Nate’s hands grasping her peach interrupted all words and thoughts as she sucked in a gasp of air. “God, do you have any idea how much I want to fuck you on this counter right now?” He felt recklessly out of control, caring not who would see this debase display between a boss and his assistant. His nose ran up along her carotid as he inhaled long and deep to savour her floral sweetness upon the back of his throat. It amazed him how her pheromones alone had the power to make his cock twitch inside his pants.
Ava couldn’t resist temptation, her back arching as she pressed her stomach up against his grey blazer and silently cursed herself for choosing to wear her tailored suit and not a dress or skirt today. Excited breaths left her lips as she trailed her fingertips down his stomach over each button and then to the buckle of his belt until she finally felt his hard and aching need pushing against his zipper. It aroused her to no end the effect she had on him.
“Down boy,” she breathlessly giggled against his lips, her heart pounding against his own as she pressed closer and cut off any morsel of space between them. Her cheek turned in to his touch as he cupped her face, his eyes running across her in such an intimate manner that it made her forget the function of breathing.
“I love you,” he whispered against her perfect lips as he paused to stare beseechingly into her eyes. He meant every word of it so brutally candidly that he felt like a damn fool for selling himself short to a woman back across the Atlantic who never made him feel a drop of devotion as he did with Ava. Staring into her blue diamonds, Nate finally knew what love was.
Ava froze on the spot, those three words having the power to grip her heart in a vice-strong hold and squeezing a droplet of fear from her. However, as she stared back into his eyes, it felt as though her jigsaw was finally complete, no matter if a puff of air could shatter such a fragile piece of art. “Nate, I—”
“Yeah, Kensington told me he filled the retraction yesterday, can you believe it?”
Nate and Ava turned their attention to the voices approaching the small kitchen before jolting apart in the space of a heartbeat. Despite their nonchalant appearance of leaning against opposite ends of the kitchen, their hearts were pulsing amongst other areas of their body.
Ava gave the two suits a tight smile and a nod of her head as they entered the kitchen before glancing back at Nate’s stoic expression, watching his lips twitch as he struggled to hide his amusement. When the two gents were preoccupied with the fridge, Nate wiped his brow, readjusted his awkward crotch situation, and huffed in relief, causing Ava to cover her mouth to suppress her amusement.
Ava spentthe rest of her day digging her way out of her workload and avoiding any further near misses with Nate. She was currently sat at her desk tasked with the glamorous job of balancing the remainder of the late Oliver Forbes’s inheritance between the remaining Forbes family members. It was a very mundane task to undertake but involved a lot of time-consuming paperwork and auditing. However, as her finger jabbed the enter key to complete the transfer from Oliver’s escrow account, a large error popped up like a big dirty mark on her screen. One side of Ava’s nose scrunched up in confusion as her finger stabbed away at the enter key, again and again, willing the pop-up error to die until she huffed in defeat and slumped back in her chair. She pinched the bridge of her nose, knowing she was burnt out from being chained to her computer all morning, and decided to take a break.
As Ava stared into the office’s bathroom mirror, her thumbs pressed under the purple crescent welts staining the delicate flesh beneath her eyes. It was perhaps the worst thing about being so pale, the fact that every little blemish and imperfection showed up like the Blackpool Illuminations.
“Oh, Ms. Archer!” boomed the ostentatious voice of Charlotte Forbes as the cubicle door banged open behind her and caused Ava to jump like a spooked kitten. “My apologies, did I frighten you?”
“It’s fine,” Ava croaked with a hand against her fleeting heart. “And please, call me Ava.”
“Ava,” Charlotte agreed with a gracious nod of her head as she joined her by the sinks and turned to notice her dabbing a cold paper towel beneath her eyes. “Oh my…busy weekend, dear?”
“Is it that obvious?” She chuckled, looking at Charlotte before back at her reflection. “I swear there isn’t a facial out there that could rejuvenate the hours of overtime these eyes have undergone!”
“Pish-posh! All you need is a top-quality eye cream and the best concealer on the market, my dear!” Charlotte denounced as she opened her clutch bag and pulled out a few tubes of various beauty products. “Please, do allow me?”
Ava was taken aback by the woman’s generosity as she let Mrs. Forbes dab makeup upon the unsightly blemishes. “That’s very kind of you, thank you, Mrs. Forbes.”
“Oh, anytime, and please do call me Charlotte.” She finished smudging in the mixture with Ava’s skin before announcing, “There, good as new!”
“My God! That really is a fabulous concoction you’ve got there!” Ava marvelled at the non-existent stains under her eyes.
“My secret is that I add a tiny amount of tanning pigment to it, works wonders!” Charlotte said from the side of her mouth and chuckled.
As Charlotte began putting away her makeup, Ava glanced down into her purse, noticing a lipstick in an oddly familiar shade of orange that she couldn’t pinpoint where she recognised it from, however, the colour made her stomach sink deep into her stomach and fill it with dread—for what reason, she did not know.
“Lovely shade isn’t it?” Charlotte said, noticing Ava’s stare.
“It’s a very unique colour…”
“Yes, it was a gift from my beloved Oliver… Anyway, best be off, my dear. Remember to get some beauty sleep!” Mrs. Forbes abruptly breezed out of the ladies’ toilets leaving Ava wondering if her first impression of the woman had been too hasty.
When Ava was back at her desk, the brief time away from her computer had given her a new sense of motivation as she rolled up her sleeves, ready to tackle the dreaded system error still upon her screen.
“Let’s have a look then, Oliver…why is your account blocking me…” she murmured to herself as she clicked her tongue thoughtfully in time with the clicking of her mouse. “What in the hell?” Her eyes widened as she clicked onto his inheritance fund that the firm was safeguarding until a settlement was made. “No…no…no, that can’t be right…”
Where the balance had once shown the amount of £250,000 now showed as nil.
Panic gripped a hold of her gut as she frantically treaded through the entire system, desperately searching the audit trail to see who released those funds from his account, but every lead came up blank as though a phantom had come in and wiped Oliver’s account clean. She left no file unturned, flicking through every financial document she could find, seeking an explanation to the quarter of a million pounds that had ludicrously vanished.
It didn’t matter who Ava’s father was, if she didn’t find that money her arse was on fire.
“Fuck me,” she croaked with a hand covering her mouth, anxiety creeping up her throat as she took a deep breath and wiped her palms on her legs. Many people would bury their heads in the sand at this point and wait until some other unfortunate soul spotted the error, but that wasn’t Ava. Whether she buggered up the system or not, she would raise her hand and own up to her error.
She gathered all the documentation on Oliver’s accounts and pushed her legs one in front of the other until she reached Nate’s office with a polite knock on his door.
“Sorry to disturb, but the weirdest thing just hap—” Ava stopped short with a gasp, gawking at the silver set of eyes that were cutting through her like shards of ice.
Sat upon the ledge of the large mahogany desk, Mr. Archer glared so furiously at his daughter that Ava didn’t need to question why he was here. Her eyes glanced down at Nate, who was peering sheepishly over his shoulder, sat on one of the chairs in front of her father.
“Ava,” Tom seethed her name through his teeth as his fists gripped around his cane. “Shut that door and get in here now. You have a lot of explaining to do, young lady.”