Stubborn Hearts (Timid Souls #1)

by Melanie Munton

  It was just Claire.

  With her body still slung over my shoulder, I headed for the bathroom. More specifically the shower, where I accomplished my third goal of the night: taking her up against the wall.

  That was what I had to deal with every time I heard her voice ring out from the main floor or if she passed by my office on her way to the restroom. I didn’t even try to not picture her naked anymore because my efforts were useless.

  And an hour later as she sat in the chair across from my desk, that was all I seemed to be doing. Picturing her naked and how she felt that night. I knew it sounded corny but it had never felt so good before Claire. No one had ever felt that amazing, had ever affected me in such a carnal, ferocious way. It was another reason that made forgetting her nearly impossible to do.

  We were supposed to be going over her assignments and responsibilities, basically everything that she would be in charge of and everything I would ask of her as an assistant. And some of the things that were floating around in my head, a boss should never ask of his assistant.

  This was going to be so much harder than I thought, in more ways than one.

  “Watch this tray here,” I said to her, indicating an almost empty bin on my desk. “Anything that goes in here will need to be filed away in those cabinets,” I said as I pointed to the metal cabinets behind her.

  “Like the rest of this won’t be enough, I’m going to have to do your filing, too?” she asked in a snarky voice that completely took me by surprise. We hadn’t argued once or acted in any way unpleasant to each other since before our night together.

  My head snapped up to hers where I saw that same look of vulnerability that I had seen in my bedroom that night. She was trying not to bite her bottom lip and was tapping her foot on the floor. She never fidgeted like that. But what caught my attention more than anything was the look in her eyes. They were pleading, almost desperate, as she stared at me from across the room.

  Uncertainty growing in my voice, I replied carefully, “That’s sort of what an assistant does.”

  I was treading lightly here because I didn’t exactly know what was happening. Even though we hadn’t had much communication since our one night together, I thought that we had broken new ground, reached a new plateau. That we had forged a silent agreement to get along, not bicker like five-year-olds anymore. I thought that night had changed something with us. At the very least, made us friends if we couldn’t be more.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I’m just wondering how many hours a day you expect me to work with everything you want me to keep up with,” she said, gesturing to the long list of tasks I had given her, her voice biting.

  And that’s when I knew.

  The look on her face, her snappy replies. She wanted us to go back to the way we were in the beginning, when we could barely stand each other, spewing insults in our every day, normal conversation. I suppose with us, that was steady ground. A familiar area for us that we both knew how to operate.

  The feelings that our night provoked within me—and I was hoping within her, too—weren’t something either of us had often navigated through, if at all. The whole thing felt like a mine field, dangerous territory that would cause immeasurable pain and misery with one wrong step.

  Fighting was easy. Emotions were not.

  And she was basically asking for a way to avoid it, an escape.

  She wanted the comfort of being in that familiar terrain again.

  And because I didn’t want to cause her pain, because I was afraid that if I did push her too far before either of us was ready—that I would somehow hurt her—I acquiesced.

  I was no expert in the relationship department and the last thing I would ever want to do is enter into one with Claire with no knowledge of what I was doing and what I even wanted out of it. It was probably for the best, anyway. She should find someone who wouldn’t antagonize her the way I did. Someone who had a normal, regular job, and who she had more in common with.

  Even as I came to my decision, a sinking feeling was forming in my stomach. But I ignored it. “Well, if you can’t handle this job, Miss Stevens,” I said, hissing her name even though it wasn’t heartfelt, my throat feeling like sandpaper as I said it, “maybe this isn’t the place for you. I could easily replace you with someone else if you don’t feel up to the task.”

  Her shoulders relaxed slightly, her face showing signs of actual relief at my response. How messed up was that? She was happy with me treating her like crap. While I felt like my guts were being ripped out.

  “Oh no, I can handle it, Mr. Edelman.”

  My last name on her lips sounded like a death sentence being issued. Like whatever had changed between us that night was forever dead in her eyes and I would never get it back. That lump that had formed in my throat was only getting bigger with each passing minute.

  “I never back down from a challenge,” she added as she stood up from her chair and headed for the door, the sentence itself sounding like its own challenge. What challenge, I wasn’t sure. This whole conversation was making my head spin.

  “Neither do I, Claire,” I mumbled to myself after she left my office, “neither do I.”

  If she wanted to play it this way for now, fine. I would let her feel like she had some control back to regain her footing. But I wasn’t giving up. She might have thought that it was over between us, but I was not removing myself from the picture. She wanted to fight whatever this was but I was pretty sure I could wear her down with enough time. She was just being stubborn and I was slowly learning how to handle Claire when she was like that.

  True, I was getting whiplash from the rollercoaster ride that we had been on since we first met.

  But if it meant that she would be mine when the ride eventually ended, I was willing to play along…for now.

  It was going to be an interesting summer.

  ##

  Chapter Eight

  Claire

  Three months ago

  July

  I had no idea what I was getting into when I accepted this internship. I hadn’t stopped moving since May and I couldn’t even remember the last time I had gotten a decent night’s sleep. And as much as I hated to admit it, I knew that part of that was because I couldn’t stop thinking about David.

  I was losing sleep over him as much as I was over the reports I was currently sifting through, looking for one in particular out of about a hundred.

  I had certainly got what I asked for from him, too.

  He had been an epic prick to me since that conversation we had in his office back in May.

  A part of me—the irrational, stupid side—had wanted him to refuse to go back to the way we first were. To want to maintain the truce that had formed between us that night we had at his place. I’d wanted him to want to see if there could actually be an us.

  But instead, he had went along with the arguing, the rude comments, the sarcastic, snide retorts. And that was how I wanted it to be, how it should be. The only way anything could work between us. It was the only sort of relationship we could have.

  I thought that maybe if I repeated those things to myself enough I would eventually be able to convince myself.

  But it never worked.

  I thought that if we went back to hating each other that any feelings I had toward him would be eviscerated by his bossy, smartass attitude. I thought that I could actually grow to hate him.

  But I hadn’t.

  In fact, it was the complete opposite, which was probably evidence of how unhealthy our whole relationship was. Fighting with him every day made me miss him every night. Going at it with him was oddly comforting, but I also missed Nice David. I longed for more nights like the only one we’d had together. I wanted more of his sweet side, the playful side that I had only gotten to see for a few hours. I craved the gentle, sensual demeanor he had when we were lying in his bed together. But I also wanted that hot, rough side I never knew he had. Sexy David.

  I honestly didn’t know
how I felt anymore. But I knew that this whole back and forth squabbling thing between us was no longer working for me.

  It wasn’t enough.

  But it had to be.

  Because regardless of what I wanted and how I felt about everything, David seemed more than content to keep our relationship the way it was. He hadn’t said anything to me about that night or given me any indication that he wanted more. In fact, I don’t think we’d had one non-work-related conversation since May, which told me that he was fine with the way things were. He could have even slept with someone—or multiple someones—since our night together and I wouldn’t have known.

  The thought made me almost sick to my stomach. And I knew that reaction was trouble with a capital “T,” so I ignored it altogether.

  If he was moving on, then I needed to as well.

  “Miss Stevens, where is that file I gave you yesterday?” David asked from behind me.

  It was pretty informal around the office and everybody called each other by their first names, except for David and me. I guess it was our way of keeping the barrier up, of making sure those lines weren’t crossed again. Distancing ourselves from each other, something I was finding I liked less and less.

  I swiveled around in my desk chair to look at him. All of his suits fit him perfectly and today was no different. He looked just as gorgeous as he had the day before and the day before that.

  I sighed. “Which file, Mr. Edelman? You gave me several yesterday.”

  I admit that this arrangement was what I had wanted back in May, but it was starting to get tedious. Dealing with him on top of everything else I was having to do for this job, plus my classes, was starting to wear on me. I was waking up more exhausted in the mornings than when I went to bed the night before, just thinking about what I was going to have to deal with that day. The pissed off part of me that had to listen to him bitch at me all hours of the day was growing very tired and weary.

  He huffed, frustrated. “The one with the long list of names,” was all I got. Luckily, I knew which file he was talking about despite his vagueness.

  I pulled it out from underneath a stack of files and documents that I had to get through by the end of the day. He ripped it out of my hands before I could pass it over to him, causing me to release some sort of growl from my throat. I had an extra cup of coffee this morning, which kept my anger at the forefront, instead of turning into that weariness I usually felt by the end of the day.

  David had started to walk away but stopped when he heard my grumbles. “Something wrong, Miss Stevens?” he asked, staring down at me with an unreadable expression.

  He hadn’t shown any emotion toward me the whole summer, except annoyance. His poker face was in place at all times and that probably drove me crazier than anything else. I studied him for a minute, looking for any residual feelings, any spark of need. Anything that told me he was as sick of this as I was.

  Anything that I saw back in April.

  I got nothing.

  The disappointment was crushing, much more devastating a blow than I would have imagined.

  I sighed again, no longer in the mood to do this with him. “No, nothing.”

  He watched me for another few seconds and then walked away without another word or any kind of discernable reaction.

  And I had at least four more months of this.

  An hour later, I was walking down the hall to the restroom with my head down, contemplating which poison I should slip into David’s espresso, when I was nearly knocked on my ass by a hard body coming out of the men’s restroom.

  A set of strong hands reached out and steadied me, forcing me to look up and see who I needed to apologize to. The hard look in David’s gray eyes and his clenched jaw caused whatever apology I was conjuring up to disappear.

  “If you wanted to rub up against me, Miss Stevens, you should have just said so,” David said in a low voice, leaning down and bringing our faces closer together. “I’m sure I could accommodate you.” Then, he added in a whisper, “Again.”

  My entire body froze.

  That was the first time either one of us had acknowledged our night together since it happened.

  And I did not like it.

  Not the reminder itself but the manner in which he referenced it. Like such a thing was a regular occurrence for him. Like that night had been no different than thousands of others. Like I was nothing more to him than an easy lay, one he could have whenever he wanted.

  It hurt but it also pissed me off.

  I decided to give power to the anger instead of the pain because the pain wasn’t going to help the situation. I grabbed his forearm and dragged him inside his office before anyone on the main floor noticed what was going on.

  I shut the door behind him and spun around to see that cocky smirk back on his face. “Well, I wasn’t exactly meaning right now. But I’m game if you are,” he said but he didn’t move closer to me.

  I hoped my face didn’t show how much his words upset me, bothering me on a deeper level than I wanted to venture to.

  “Stop,” I gritted through my teeth, raising my hand to halt any further sexual comments from him.

  “Stop what?” he asked.

  “Stop talking about that night. Stop being an asshole. I can’t deal with this every day anymore. Just…stop.”

  When I looked back up at him, his mouth had transformed into a self-satisfied grin which confused me. Did he truly like torturing me? Was he getting pleasure from treating me this way? If he was and I had read him wrong this whole time, we had much bigger problems.

  “I thought you preferred things this way between us.” His voice was now serious, devoid of any mockery or suggestive insinuation.

  “I never said I wanted to be treated like a cheap play thing,” I snapped, my voice vicious. “I’m not your little toy.”

  His eyes widened in surprise and his forehead scrunched in puzzlement. “I never meant to imply that, Claire. I would never treat you that way.”

  Deep down, I knew he wouldn’t, even if I hadn’t heard the sincerity in those words. He just never let on to what he was really feeling, which only further perturbed me and complicated my own emotions. The whole thing was just becoming too frustrating to follow.

  “Look, I know that night didn’t mean anything to you. But I don’t need you throwing it in my face like you just did. Okay?”

  Shit.

  Those bastard tears were trying to make an appearance and they had no business being in this conversation.

  I was even more baffled when I detected genuine hurt flash in his eyes, his frown making his whole face fall. “I never said that night didn’t mean anything to me.”

  Ah, hell.

  I couldn’t hear that right now. I didn’t have room for it, nor did I have the courage to explore what he meant by it.

  Katy Perry was right.

  Men could be so hot and cold.

  “I just need to get through the next four months without losing my mind. So, it would really help if you could just act civil toward me.” I completely skated by his comment and I was sure he noticed.

  His eyes narrowed and he looked to be considering my words. It took him several seconds to answer me and I became increasingly anxious with his silence.

  “I can do that,” he quietly replied.

  I nodded and didn’t trust my voice to say anything else, so I turned and headed for the door. When I had my hand on the doorknob, ready to turn it and walk out, he spoke again.

  “That’s all?”

  I looked over my shoulder at him and my heart cracked a little more at what I saw. He actually looked like he expected to hear more, like he needed to. He even looked nervous to hear my answer, scared that it wouldn’t be the one he wanted.

  He must have seen the questions in my eyes. “There isn’t anything else you want to say?” he clarified.

  I wanted to give him the truth. I wanted to give him everything that I had been repressing for the last several months. I had
just come in here to confront him about his attitude. To convince him to be nicer to me. I wasn’t prepared for all of this. I didn’t expect us to address the underbelly of our situation.

  So I gave him a lie.

  I shrugged, hoping it looked casual. “No. You’re my boss and I’m your employee. Nothing else matters, right?”

  It was so ridiculous but that stupid part of me wanted him to disagree. To demand that I admit my feelings and to hear him confess his own.

  The look of disappointment on his face was enough to make my heart splinter. He swallowed and slowly nodded. I could see him already putting his mask of indifference back on, acting as if our entire conversation left him utterly unaffected.

  “Right,” he said, his tone flat.

  I walked out without another word, hating myself for being such a coward.

  I understood why guys had such a hard time trying to figure us women out sometimes. We tended to feel so many things at once, we often confused ourselves.

  I felt for them, but only partially.

  Because men could be just as idiotic as we were and could be just as hard to read.

  ##

  By the end of the day, I was completely depleted of energy. Most of the office had already gone home since it was late, but I would have gotten hell tomorrow if I hadn’t finished sorting through that stack of files before I left. Simon popped up beside my desk as I was finishing gathering the rest of my things.

  I assumed he could see the misery on my face when he smiled softly, his eyes sympathetic, and asked, “Long day?”

  I groaned. “And they just keep getting longer.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t get any better until after November,” he said, nodding his head. He was looking down at his feet, seeming nervous. I had a feeling I knew what was coming. “Hey, um, I was wondering. Would you like to go to dinner with me sometime?”

  He had been working up to asking for months and had finally built up enough courage. I considered it, my eyes shifting from him down to the document on my desk that had David’s neat signature scribbled across it. I didn’t have any reason to feel guilty for agreeing, did I? If his behavior at the office was any indication, David wouldn’t care if I suddenly dropped dead in the middle of his office, let alone went on a date with someone. Our conversation this afternoon notwithstanding.