“My truck, my keys, I’m driving.”
“Olivia,” he snarled at me.
“Noah,” I tried to snarl back. “I’m very particular about my seat position. I don’t want you moving it and messing it all up. If my ego could survive all the things you did for me in the cabin, your ego can survive being driven by a woman.”
“Don’t talk about the cabin,” he said.
That hurt. That he wanted to completely shut down the time we’d shared. So much he must have seen in it on my face.
“I just meant…” he said, getting closer to me. “I don’t want to be hard during a damn board meeting and I will be if I think about the cabin.”
Hookay. That was certainly a different reason for not wanting to talk about the cabin. Maybe that time together had affected him like it affected me?
But yesterday with him not wanting me to shut my door, he was basically telling me that I was back to being off-limits. Someone who couldn’t touch him. Someone he couldn’t touch.
There was no other meaning for those actions.
We stood there for a moment, with his face just above mine. Since I was in heels, his lips were within reach. If I stretched a little, we could be kissing again…
“Olivia,” he growled. “Do. Not. Tempt. Me.”
I pulled away. “Right. Of course. We need to go.”
In the end he grumbled about it some more, but he let me drive.
11
Dyson Headquarters
Ark
She was impressive as hell and, not for the first time, I was blown away by her.
The meeting went as I expected it. Management started out telling me how I could have done a thousand other things rather than blowing the well. I told them they didn’t know shit about shit.
Then things got heated.
Until Olivia stepped in. She was strong, smart and armed with facts that no one in the room could dispute. She actually did what I joked about with Cal. Convinced an entire room of senior management as well as the CEO that not only I had done the right thing, I’d most likely saved the other wells, including the rig itself.
“So you can see, gentlemen,” she said in conclusion to her presentation. “Really you should be thanking Noah. Sorry, Ark.”
No, she didn’t call me Ark. She called me Noah. And when I was deep inside her later tonight, she was going to be screaming my name again.
I glanced around the room and I could see it. In their faces, in the way they looked at her. I wasn’t the only one who wanted to fuck her, but I was the only one who was going to have the privilege to do it.
Frank looked at me. “And the other wells?”
“Kurt’s at top capacity. Fred, I might be able to get a little more out of if I change up a few things. Bridge…not so sure. And there is always the potential for another well. I’ve started drawing up some plans.”
I hadn’t brought them with me. Other than Olivia, they wouldn’t know what they were looking at. These guys were the suits. The money men. And there was no tie in the world that would ever make me fit in with them.
Olivia did. She slid right into this world. She could speak both my language and their language, which made her a dual threat. She once told me she wanted to change the culture from within. I thought the idea was crazy.
Now, seeing her in this environment, I could see how she could do it.
One thing I knew for certain. There were bigger things in her future than just running inspections at Hope’s Point.
She took the job because she wanted to learn from the best. I was a stepping stone for her. Another move to make for her to climb that ladder a little higher. I could see that now.
