I break first. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
More awkward silence. Wow. It feels like the only time we communicate clearly is when our clothes are flying off. Truth be told, I wouldn’t mind peeling him out of that suit right now. “Do you want to do this standing, or should I sit?”
It comes off a little snappier than I want.
“Testy.” His lip quirks.
“Annoying.” I shoot him a withering glare before I breeze toward his desk and plonk myself down into a leather chair, noting the way his gaze glides all over me. I can’t explain the energy between us—it’s crackling and tense and so damn addictive it should come with a substance abuse warning label.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask, dumping my box of photos on his desk.
“I thought you might have one.”
I snort. “Why would I bother? You’d just thwart it like you did last time.”
“Still bitter about that, huh?” He lowers himself into his chair, popping the button on his jacket. His suit is perfectly fitted to his muscular body and it highlights his broad shoulders and chest.
“I’m not bitter, you’re just a poor sport.”
“I don’t like to lose.”
“You play dirty.”
“So do you.” He shrugs in a way that makes me want to wipe that self-satisfied expression off his face. Yet, despite the smirk, his eyes are like twin blue flames.
Where was this heat when he ghosted on the weekend? He left me alone while the sheets cooled around me. Left me alone after he saw me in my most vulnerable state. I remember that feeling—my ex walked away more than once to keep me in place.
To remind me that he had the upper hand.
“I was thinking we could do a timeline of their lives, and maybe share a story from childhood, one from their teenage years and one from adulthood.” I keep my mind focused on the task in front of me. Flipping the lid off the box of photos, I pull some pictures out. “We can figure out how to tie the stories to opposite parts of their personalities, to show how they complement one another.”
I’m really hoping he’ll have something good to say about Mike...because I sure as hell don’t.
Flynn is still and silent as a mountain, watching me with focus and intensity. It’s unnerving. Unsettling. And yet a delicious heat blooms deep in my belly, fanning through me like rays of sunshine.
Focus, you idiot. You need to stop falling for guys like him.
“Did you bring your photos along? You said we could scan them all here.” I’m clutching desperately for something safe to talk about. Something neutral.
But he continues to watch me.
“I’ve actually got a funny story about this one.” I hold up a picture of Presley and me. We’re both covered from head to toe in red cake and pink buttercream and wearing giant smiles. “We ended up having a food fight, because my mother only baked one birthday cake and we didn’t want to blow the candles out together. I started it...”
I’d always started it, as a kid. I was a firecracker and Presley was a calm blue ocean.
“I took a fist-full of cake and mushed it into her hair. My mother was horrified, but then Presley turned around and did the same thing to me.” I laugh at the memory. “We went through the whole cake in minutes and the food dye tinted our hair pink.”
Flynn’s lip twitches. But still nothing.
Am I going to have to carry this entire conversation? If I had some cake in front of me right now, I’d definitely mush some in his hair.
“Will you fucking say something?” I slap the photos down on his desk. “I’m not going to play whatever power game you’re getting off on right now.”
He looks me dead in the eye. “Did you get that top in the kids’ section?”
I want to slap him and kiss him at the same time, but I can’t really complain. I did choose this outfit with every intention of showing him what he can’t have—except I know I’ll fold like a bad hand of poker the second he asks me for anything.
Because as much as I want to lump him in with my ex, I can’t. Vas would never have held me while I cried. He would never have told me a personal story so I knew I wasn’t alone. He would never have tucked me into bed after letting me fall asleep on his couch.
Hell, no. My ex would have sent one of his staff in to deal with me and he would have extracted himself with all the precision of a practised playboy. But Flynn is...different.
“Did you get that suit in the Obnoxious Asshole department?” I retort.
“I did actually.” He runs his hands down his chest, grinning like a sexy villain. “It’s my favourite area of the Rich Dickheads Department Store.”
I burst out laughing. “I really want to hate you, you know that?”
“Same.” Something hot and warning flashes across his face. “It’s most annoying.”
“Why did you leave the other day?” The question rushes out of me before I have a chance to even think about holding it back. Dammit, why do I get like this around him? He doesn’t owe me anything and I like it that way because it means I don’t owe him.
He sighs and for a minute I think he’s going to give me his “I had to work” bullshit. But he leans back in his chair and knots his hands in front of him. “I felt like I was getting too close.”
“Really?” I’m not sure what else to say and I don’t know whether it’s comforting or terrifying that he feels the same as I do.
“Yeah. There’s something...addictive about you.”
I sigh at his word choice. “Funny, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about you.”
“I don’t understand it.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “We want opposite things and I promised myself I wasn’t going to compromise. I don’t compromise for anyone else.”
But he has for me. It fills my heart, smooths over all the dents and cracks. And truthfully, I’m different around him, too. I’d never let any other man comfort me the way he did on the weekend—I’d make damn sure I was nowhere near anyone before I let it all out. But around Flynn I feel...safe.
“Your sister tells me you can’t stay in one place for long,” he adds. “She called you a nomad.”
It’s true. But besides Presley, I’ve never had anyone who wants me to stay and my relationship with my twin is complicated. I’ve never really belonged anywhere, so I keep moving. “I haven’t tried to hide that part of me.”
“I know, but the reminder was something I needed to hear.”
From where I sit, facing his desk, I can see the back of a photo frame. I reach for it and Flynn doesn’t stop me—the picture is of him, Zoe and another man I assume is his brother. They both share the same blue eyes and red hair. The little girl is laughing with her whole body, and the love on Flynn’s face is so genuine my heart wants to break.
“She was diagnosed with Batten disease two years ago,” he says. Now there’s no teasing in his expression, no joy.
I trace a finger over the little girl’s sweet face. “Will she be okay?”
“Most people with Batten disease die in their teens or early twenties.”
It’s not the response I’m expecting, and the information socks me in the chest.
“Her vision is already deteriorating and there’s a strong chance she’ll start to experience seizures in the next few years. Among other things.” Flynn’s voice is thick and I suck on my lower lip to stem my tears. I won’t cry in front of him again, but hearing the raw pain in his voice—no matter how well he tries to hide it—is killing me. “There’s no cure, as yet. This is why I work as hard as I do. My company is trying to find a way to slow these symptoms, to give these wonderful people and their families more time together.”
“That’s why you don’t do casual, because of her.”
“I had a mother who refused to put her children before her own hedonistic nee
ds. Zoe’s mother did the same...she abandoned her the way my mother abandoned Gabe and me.” He reaches for the photo and places it back on his desk. “But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be a source of stability for her because I know what it’s like to be treated as a temporary, disposable thing.”
Oh, God. Listening to this big, sexy man open up like this...
I know what he means. My mother wasn’t as bad as his, by the sounds of it, but I never felt like I mattered. And in similar situations, Flynn and I have become polar opposites. He’s dug his heels into the ground, becoming a pillar of strength and stability.
And I’ve given stability the middle finger.
Similar circumstances have forced us in opposite directions, as if we’re two identical poles on a magnet repelling each other. Pushing away. And yet...
I still want him. I can’t stop thinking about him. I’m drawn to him even though I know I won’t allow myself to commit. Every other time I’ve done it I’ve ended up with my heart bruised and bleeding. Feeling unworthy. Being unworthy.
“We’re totally wrong for each other, aren’t we?” I say.
“Wholly and categorically.” He stares at me with those bluer-than-blue eyes, with his sexy half-smirk. “We want opposite things.”
“Do we? Because it sounds like we actually want the same thing, we’re simply going about it in different ways. I run from commitment to avoid getting hurt and you set the bar of commitment so high that nobody will ever meet your standards.” I cock my head. “End result is the same, though—we’re both alone.”
And miserable.
I won’t admit that aloud, but it’s true. I’m sick of living a meaningless life without real relationships—romantic or platonic. It’s so bloody lonely. But I’m afraid to let another person change me, to convince me to want more.
I won’t let myself be vulnerable to that kind of rejection. Because what if I change, what if I become someone new, and I’m still not enough?
CHAPTER TWENTY
Flynn
EVERY BRAIN CELL I have is firmly telling me to walk away from Drew—she’s the highest kind of flight risk. A nomadic wild child who lives by her own rules and doesn’t let obligation ground her. If anyone is going to walk away when things get tough, it’ll be her.
You’re underestimating her.
That niggling voice is getting louder—telling me that I’m holding myself back from something important. I keep reasoning that it’s chemistry. Sexual tension. Good old-fashioned sheet-burning compatibility. Our bodies are well suited...but our minds?
You want more with her.
I do. I want to explore this unexpected thing and see where it goes. And I am not a man who explores. I decide. I act. And other people fall into line.
But not her.
“You think I have high standards?” I watch her expression—it’s guarded. But I’m slowly learning her tells.
“Impossible standards,” she corrects. “I picked that up about you the moment we met.”
It feels like years ago the night I went into her apartment, accepting a drink and declining her invitation for more. Then she wore me down and I loved every second of it. “You said my employees hated me.”
“I said they left.” She narrows her eyes. “But I didn’t guess that you’d expect them to leave.”
Francis accused me once of putting people through their paces too hard when I first hire them. It’s true, I guess. I expect a lot and I want to see if people are going to fold easily, because I refuse to waste my time on people who don’t have tenacity and drive.
Drew hasn’t folded.
She’s incredibly strong—and I don’t mean the tough chick attitude and provocative outfits. She’s strong where it counts. Inside.
“When was the last time you dated someone?” she asks.
I opt for the comfortable territory of smartassery. “Does this count?”
“No.” She rolls her eyes.
“Why not? We’re having sex and arguing—sounds like a relationship to me.”
“You’re dodging the question.” Drew folds her arms over the front of her obscenely tight top, pushing her breasts up higher. It’s all I can do not to weep for how perfect they are.
“I’m distracted.”
She shoots me a look. Dammit, I’m not getting out of this one.
“Two years ago, around the time Zoe was diagnosed.”
I’d decided in my spiral of guilt and pain that I would do things “perfectly,” as if it might bring some karmic redemption. I’d quit my job not a month after making partner, dumped the woman I’d been seeing, started my company and poured everything into my work, hoping—praying—that I might be able to salvage things.
“Before me, when was the last time you had sex?”
I don’t even need to think about it. “Two years ago.”
“Why break your rules for me?” She’s looking at me with those ethereal, silvery eyes like she can see right past my bullshit and self-preservation.
“You reminded me what I was missing.”
“Ah, the peep show.” She looks almost...disappointed.
“I meant excitement. Anticipation.” I won’t dare say it, but she made me realise I was missing out on living. Being something other than my work. Being something other than a desperate uncle and brother. “I didn’t expect you to ask that question.”
“I didn’t expect you to answer honestly,” she admits.
Whatever this thing is between us—it’s not casual. I wouldn’t have left her in my bed because I needed space to think if it was casual. And casual sex sure as hell doesn’t involve getting to know one another, talking about pasts and wounds and the way we protect ourselves. It involves fucking. Maybe dinner.
This is so much more than fucking and dinner.
“I was dating someone up until about a month ago,” she says quietly. I don’t want to imagine it—another man’s hands on her body. Another man cradling her the way I did when she cried. “I thought it meant something. I thought he cared about me as a person.”
“Give me a name.”
She laughs and shakes her head. “He’s not worth your time. Or mine.”
“He was an idiot if he didn’t see how amazing you are.”
“You don’t know me, Mr. Suit.”
“No? I know you care about your sister more than anyone else on earth. I know you have good taste in music and you don’t let people tell you how to act and you’re not the kind of woman to give a shit if someone judges you for the way you dress. In fact, you welcome a bit of judgment because it means you can keep your distance more easily.”
Her nostrils twitch. “Maybe I just like black.”
“I’m sure you do, Blondie.” I meet her stare.
“I never wanted to get entangled with you.” She bites her lip. The second she walked into my office, my pulse jacked and my hands got twitchy and my mind started circling—that’s what she does to me.
I meant every word of what I said: before her, I’d forgotten how to be excited.
“I never wanted this to be more than some mutual pleasure,” she adds.
“You’re lying to yourself if you think this is only a booty call.”
“I thought it was a meeting to discuss the rehearsal dinner presentation.” Her innocent tone is betrayed by the cheeky sparkle in her eye. “We are in a very esteemed, professional office, after all.”
Is that a challenge? This woman puts fire in my blood like I have never experienced before. It’s like she’s taken a greyscale world and flooded it with colour. My greyscale world, which has been devoid of laughter and light for so long I had forgotten how it felt not to be wearing a boulder around my neck 24/7.
But I can’t lie to myself or to her.
“I like you, Drew. But if you’re simply looking for a warm body th
en you should leave.”
She pushes up from the chair and I’m given a glorious view of her long, slim legs. For a minute, I’m sure she’s about to go. But then she winks at me. “I don’t need a warm body. I’ve got a handheld device that does the job and doesn’t give me any smartass comebacks.”
I can’t help but laugh. “I do bring the smartass comebacks.”
She saunters over to my door and flicks the lock. The sound is like a gunshot in my quiet office and I’m immediately tense in the best way possible. Electricity filters through me, crackling and hissing until my body is a livewire.
She knows where I stand—this isn’t meaningless sex. I don’t know what is beyond that, but I know I want more. From her, from myself. From life. I want to start living again.
Maybe my brother was right all along—I needed to get laid.
“How soundproof are these walls?” she asks.
“Not soundproof enough.” I yank at the knot of my tie, loosening it so I can slide the silk from under my collar. “Come here.”
Her eyes grow dark and her skin is flushed the prettiest shade of pink, but she complies. With each step, her chunky platform boots knock against the floor. And then she’s in front of me, leaning against my desk.
I shove my laptop back and it pushes into the box of photos, sending them skittering to the ground. Then I hoist Drew up so her bare ass is on my desk. That’s right—bare ass. No underwear in sight.
“You knew exactly what you were doing when you came in here.” I pull the tie taut in my hands and press it against her mouth. She opens, a willing accomplice to this sexy game, her eyes glittering with power. I knot the tie behind her head, not even caring that the silk will be ruined, because the sight of that slash of red between her lips is startlingly erotic. “You wanted me hard as fucking stone, didn’t you?”
She nods.
“You wanted me horny and frustrated and staring at your incredible legs so you could pay me back for walking out.”
She nods again. Defiant, even if she’s speechless.
“You know I like to rise to the challenge, right?” I tilt her face up to mine to show her I mean business. I’ve never had sex in my office before—never even fantasised about it because work is my sacred space. But for her, I’ll bend all my rules.
The Fling--A Scorching Hot Romance Page 12
