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gratefully at him as I sat down. “How is Susan doing?”
    “She’s doing fine. She keeps bugging me about having you over,” he added with a wink. It didn’t escape my attention that the youngest Mr. Ryan snorted in annoyance beside me.
    “Please tell her hi from me.”
    Footsteps sounded behind me and a hand reached out to gently tug my ear. “Hey, kiddo,” Henry Ryan said, giving me a wide grin. He turned to address the rest of the room. “Sorry I’m late, guys. I guess I thought we were meeting up on your floor.”
    I chanced a smug look out of the corner of my eye, meeting my boss’ gaze. The stack of handouts came back to me and I handed a copy to him. “Here you are, Mr. Ryan.”
    Without so much as a glance, he snatched the stack and began leafing through them.
    Dick.
    Just as I was taking my seat, Henry’s boisterous voice called out, “Oh, Chloe, while I was up there waiting, I found these on the floor.” I walked over to him and saw two antiqued silver buttons sitting in his palm. “Would you ask around and see if anyone’s lost these? They look kind of expensive.”
    I felt my face heat. I had completely forgotten about my ruined shirt. “Um . . . sure.”
    “Henry, can I see those for a minute?” Jackass suddenly chimed in, taking them from his brother. He turned to me with a wicked smirk in place. “Don’t you have a blouse with buttons like these?”
    I glanced quickly around the room; Henry and Elliott were already absorbed in another conversation, oblivious to what was happening between us.
    “No,” I said, trying to sound as disinterested as possible. “I don’t.”
    “Are you sure?” Taking my hand, he ran a finger from the inside of my arm to my palm before dropping the buttons and closing my hand around them. My breath caught in my throat and my heart pounded fiercely against my chest.
    I jerked my hand back as if I’d been burned. “I’m sure.”
    “I could have sworn the blouse you wore the other day had little silver buttons. The pink one? I remember because I noticed one of them was loose when you came looking for me upstairs.”
    If possible, I felt my face heat further. What was he playing at? Was he trying to insinuate that I had orchestrated a way to get him alone in the conference room?
    Leaning in closely, his breath hot on my ear, he whispered, “You really should try to be more careful.”
    I attempted to maintain my calm as I lowered my hand from his. “You bastard,” I replied through gritted teeth before he pulled away, looking taken aback.
    How could he look surprised, as if I’d been the one to break the rules? It was one thing to be a dick to me, but to jeopardize my reputation in front of other executives —he was going to get an earful later.
    Throughout the meeting we cast glances at each other, mine fueled with anger and his with increasing uncertainty. I looked down at the spreadsheets in front of me as much as possible to avoid looking at him.
    As soon as it was all over, I gathered my things and got the hell out of there. But as expected, he was hot on my tail all the way to the elevator until we were both seething silently in the back, on our way up to the office.
    Why wouldn’t this thing hurry up, and why did someone on every floor decide they needed to use it now ? People all around us were talking on phones, shuffling files, discussing lunch plans. The noise grew to a heavy buzz, nearly drowning out the verbal ass-kicking I was giving Mr. Ryan in my head. By the time we reached the eleventh floor, the elevator was almost at capacity. When the door opened and three more people decided to squeeze in, I was pushed farther into him, my back against his chest and my ass against his . . . oh.
    I felt the rest of his body stiffen subtly and heard him take a sharp breath. Instead of pressing into him, I stepped as far away as I could. He reached forward and gripped my hip, pulling me back again.
    “I liked that ass against me,” he murmured,