Engaging the Boss (Heirs of Damon) Read Free Page A

books. Instead of taking mental notes and shaking his head over how half
the work his colleagues produced was utter crap, his mind kept drifting over to
the upcoming wedding and how it would work for Sarah to pose as his fiancée.
    He
switched to a comic book, hoping it would better hold his attention.
    He’d
never really been comfortable around women. Sex was good—since it didn’t
require much talking and didn’t take much time away from work—but relationships
had always stumped him. Women either bored him to tears or spent way too much
time trying to get him to open up and share his feelings. He was happy to work
with women as much as men—he worked better with Sarah than he ever had anyone
else—as long as they didn’t try to transform the work into something more
personal.
    He
sped up on the treadmill, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his
hand, his feet pounding on the track as his mind drifted further from his
reading.
    He’d
learned early in life that work was the thing that could bring him fulfillment.
His parents were always traveling, so they’d put him in an exclusive boarding
school in Switzerland. Whenever he achieved in school, they’d been pleased, so
he focused all his effort on academic achievements. They’d died in a plane
crash when he was almost eleven, and he’d briefly hoped his uncle could be a
father-figure for him. His uncle had kept him in the school, however, per his
parents’ wishes, he said.
    Jonathan
had suspected his uncle simply didn’t want him.
    He
spent most of his time in high school studying, and the same was true in
college and grad school. When he proposed the purpose and direction of his lab,
Cyrus Damon had been impressed and had decided to fund it, but evidently
Jonathan hadn’t lived up to his uncle’s expectations in the rest of his life.
    Which
wasn’t really surprising. He’d never been able to do anything good enough to be
a real Damon.
    But
maybe the fake fiancée plan would be enough to get him back into his uncle’s
good graces and protect the lab. Without his uncle’s money, Jonathan would have
to try to find another source of funding, and that would mean giving over
control to someone else—who would likely to take the research in a direction
influenced by money, market, or politics, which was exactly what Jonathan had
been able to avoid thus far.
    He
knew what he needed to work toward now. Restore his uncle’s good opinion.
Sustain funding in the lab. Do the work that really mattered.
    He
and Sarah had always worked well together. If they could treat this house party
like a job, like a task to be done, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
    He
was just about to resign the topic to his satisfaction and focus on the
adventures of a dark, conflicted superhero when he realized a problem he hadn’t
even considered before.
    He
stopped the treadmill, wiped the sweat off his face with a towel, and went down
the hall of the staff housing building to Sarah’s apartment.
    Knocking
on the door, he wondered how he could have been so stupid.
    It
was a minute before she opened the door, and when she did, Jonathan stared at
her in astonishment.
    Her
thick red hair was tumbled messily around her shoulders instead of pulled back
in the ponytail she normally wore. And, instead of jeans and a sweater, she
wore a white tank top and loose, cotton pajama pants. She was barefoot, and her
blue eyes were groggy and disoriented. She’d clearly just gotten out of bed.
    “What’s
wrong?” she asked, obviously anxious. Her cheeks were flushed, and she crossed
her arms in front of her chest. “Is everything all right?”
    “Yeah,”
he said, stunned by how pretty she looked. Pretty and curvy. She always dressed
in heavy sweaters and a lab coat, so he’d had no idea she had a body that
curved so deliciously. “Sorry. Did I wake you up?”
    She
glanced at her wrist, although she wasn’t wearing a watch. Then she looked
behind her shoulder at a clock that