by Lola Darling
We chat for a little while, until eventually John’s wife suggests that he might want a coffee, and she was a bit puckish, should they go to the cafeteria? He looks like he’s about to protest, until she catches his eye and shoots a meaningful glance at me and Paul.
She wants to give us some alone time.
I smile at her, grateful. It should be John having alone time with his father, I know. But hopefully they’ll have plenty more time for that still.
Hopefully we’ll all have plenty more time with him.
“You really need to pull through this,” I tell him, sternly, like I’m scolding him. It comes out sounding more like a desperate plea instead.
Paul sighs and closes his eyes, wincing slightly before he forces a smile onto his face again. “I’m trying, believe me. But Chloe … listen, you—are you listening?” He glares up at me, and I nod, blinking back another round of tears. “Good. I want to tell you something.”
“I swear to God, if you start making a deathbed speech, I am going to storm out of here,” I warn him with my best courtroom glare.
He cracks his teeth in a wide grin. “If I’m dying, then you need to be quiet and respect your elder for once.”
I roll my eyes playfully, and he reaches for my arm, wrapping his thin hand around my wrist.
“Don’t be like me, Chloe.”
My eyes glisten with real tears now. I can’t stop one of them spilling over and inching down my cheek. “Why not?” I pat his hand gently. “You’re a great man, Paul. A great father, a great mentor. I’ve always wanted to be like you.”
He sighs. “Not great. Decent, maybe. I don’t know. I tried. But I could’ve been a much better father to John. A much better person all around. I could have lived, Chloe. But I wanted to be safe. I wanted to pick the secure option, every time. I love John, and I loved his mother, but she left me after I abandoned her for the office, and I see now that I never needed to do that. I never needed to pick work over her. It never had to be one or the other. The office doesn’t need every ounce of our lives, Chloe. It doesn’t need to be the only thing we have.”
His grip tightens, along with my throat. I can’t reply—if I try to say anything now, I know I’ll start crying hysterically, and that won’t help anyone. So I nod at him through the hazy swim of salt water in my vision. I keep nodding until the door opens again, John and his wife back with their coffees, and then I sniffle once, hard, and wipe my hand across my eyes.
“I should get going,” I say as I rise, patting Paul’s wrist one last time. “You guys should chat, and you need to heal,” I add, pointing sternly at Paul.
“Aye, aye, captain,” he replies with a weak grin.
I hug John and his wife both goodbye, then duck out of the room. Only when I’m safely outside of the hospital do I really let go. I let myself cry for him, the man who taught me everything I know about the place that I work and the job that I do. The man who has raised me up through the ranks, made me a better lawyer, and a better person just for knowing him.
The man who just told me his greatest regrets, and who sounds terrifyingly similar to me in more ways than I ever imagined right now.
My phone buzzes, and I wipe away my tears for long enough to squint at the screen.
Just heard about Paul. I’m so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.
Max.
Of course he would know. Of course, of anyone in my world, he would understand exactly how I feel about my boss, and why he’s so much more than just a boss to me. And why this is so terrifying to watch.
A fresh wave of tears trickle down my cheeks, though whether it’s in response to Paul’s situation or the sudden realization that maybe I judged Max too harshly, I’m not sure. Probably both. I mean, asking how he can help right now is not the response of the asshole I’ve been building him up to be in my head.
I tap out a response.
Can we meet? I’m sorry about earlier. There’s something I’d like to tell you.
His response takes a few minutes to come, but when it does, some of the weight that’s been pressing down on my chest for the past two days straight begins to ease. Of course. Not at my place, though. I’ll text you the address.
An address follows right after that message, and without bothering to google the place, I hail a cab and read the location to the driver.
Paul is right. Work doesn’t need to be the only thing we have. And if I need to take a gamble to make sure it isn’t?
Well, for a man like Max, it’s a gamble worth taking.
26
Max
From the moment Chloe climbs out of the taxi, her makeup still smudged from where she’d obviously been crying at the hospital, her normally pristine blouse wrinkled and her hair mussed from her hurried journey, I know Travis was right. This is a woman worth fighting for. Even now, grief-stricken and harried and freaking out, she is gorgeous.
I meet her on the curb, wrapping my arms around her without a word, and she buries her face in my chest, her shoulders tensed. I rub her back in slow circles, and bend down to rest my forehead on the crown of her head. I lose track of how long we stand there—the taxi is long gone by the time she draws in a deep breath and leans back to smile weakly up at me.
“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” she says, but before she even finishes, I stop her right there with a kiss.
“You are no more of a mess than I am,” I promise. “How is Paul doing?”
Her teeth edge around her lower lip, and a crease of worry appears on her forehead. I want nothing more than to smooth that away, to lift this pain and worry from her shoulders. But I know I can’t, not about this.
“He’s up and down. I got to speak to him a little, he was conscious … the doctors aren’t sure yet, though. It’s going to be touch-and-go for a while, I think.” Her lower lip trembles, and I run my fingers through her hair, still holding her tight against me.
“I’m sorry, Chloe. I know how close you two are. But Paul is a fighter. I can’t see him going down easy.”
She smiles again, just a little bit, but it’s nice to see. Better than her near-tears expression, which could just about break my heart. “You’re right. He’s definitely going to fight it.” She sighs, then, the smile dropping from her lips as she steps back from me. Her expression looks almost sheepish now, if anything. “I’m sorry, too. About Friday night. I shouldn’t have…” She shakes her head, eyes on the ground. “I heard you talking on the phone in the middle of the night, and then I woke up and you were gone, and I just, all these insecurities I have flooded in, and I panicked and decided this wasn’t worth the risk.”
I catch her hand in mine, lock our fingers together. It never ceases to surprise me, how smoothly our hands fit together, how natural it feels, like finding a limb I hadn’t known I was missing. “I understand why you’re nervous, Chloe. I should have explained in more detail what happened that night—”
She interrupts me with a shake of her head. “You don’t need to if you don’t want to, it’s fine. I trust you.”
“But I do want to explain.” I glance around us at the street corner we’re still standing on, lost in our own little bubble. More passersby are starting to pour out of neighboring shops, though, as the hour ticks by. Pretty soon the restaurants nearby will start to flood as well. “But not here. Inside.” I tug on her hand gently, and she lets me lead her down the sidewalk into the small side door with no name on it, just a drawing of some fresh veggies beside fish and pasta.
“What’s this one, a vegetable themed bar?” she asks with a quirk to her lips, and the fact that she’s joking eases the tightness in my chest just a little.
“Not quite.” I squeeze her fingers. “Though no promises on the cheesiness or lack thereof,” I add, and she groans.
But when we push through the inner doors to our destination, she falls silent. We’re in what appears to be an underground wine cellar: brick ceiling, stacks of wine bottles on beehive-shaped crates in the corn
ers and all. Except that the middle of the wine cellar has been cleared of wine, and built up like a modern kitchen—granite countertops circle the room, each one paired with two high-backed stools and its own set of electric burners, plus a small sink.
There are a couple of other people dotting the room, but for the most part, it looks like we picked a quiet night.
“Is this what I think it is?” Chloe murmurs.
“You said we ought to come here for cooking lessons sometime,” I reply, just as the head chef bustles into the room and takes her place behind the only counter without a pair of chairs before it. “I thought it might be good for tonight.” I don’t say it out loud, but I think this might be a good distraction. A way to get her mind off of Paul, while she’s doing nothing but treading water, waiting to hear how he’s doing.
When she glances up at me with a small, grateful smile, and squeezes my hand back, I know she understands what I meant anyway, and she agrees.
We sidle onto the nearest stools and listen to the chef explain tonight’s menu: we’ll be learning to cook Flounder Mediterranean. We spend the first half of the lesson busy, dicing tomatoes and mincing garlic and learning which order to put in the ingredients for the sauce, how long to blacken the fish for, all the little things that you can’t really pick up from a cookbook.
Chloe gets into it, setting little contests for us: who can mince their pile of garlic the fastest, who can cut their fish to look the most like the chef’s demonstration. But by the time our sauce is simmering and our fish grilling, we’ve settled into an easy partnership, neither of us needing to speak as we share the duties together, each of us monitoring half the cooking.
When we settle into a lull period, I clear my throat softly, fighting back nerves. I’ve never tried to explain about Travis to anyone at work. It always sounded pretentious, talking about mentoring someone else when I hardly have my life together outside of the office. “So,” I start, my eyes fixed on the simmering sauce. “I said I was going to explain.”
She watches me, silent, her gaze sympathetic.
So I do. I tell her the whole story, not just of what happened on Friday night when I sped out of the house, but starting from the beginning. How I fell into mentoring as a resume booster, something I’m not proud of to start with. But how I got hooked, and how, once I met Travis, I knew I could actually help someone, work to change this kid’s life for the better. He’s a brilliant kid, he just needs a little extra attention sometimes, something his school isn’t always equipped to give him.
By the time I finish, Chloe has slid off her stool to wrap her arms around my shoulders, her temple resting against mine. “His mother is okay, though?” Chloe murmurs. “After her fall?”
I reach up to run my hand through her hair, before I turn to draw her into a quick kiss. “She’s doing just fine. Already back at work.” I catch her eye and half-smile. “So, you never know. Sometimes these things work out all right in the end.”
Chloe smiles back, then leans in to press her lips to mine again, slower and softer this time. I close my eyes, let the kitchen and the sound and scents of the food melt away, until it’s just her and I, alone in our bubble.
“You lovebirds are going to burn this fish,” a loud voice interrupts us, and we separate, grinning sheepishly, as the chef stops in front of our table, one eyebrow raised while she studies our dinner in progress.
Flushing, Chloe takes up the spatula again, and we wait, nervous, as the chef samples our fish and sauce side.
“Not bad,” she says, her eyes lighting up with a smile. “You two make a good team. But take it off the burner now, or it’ll overcook.”
We snap into action, and finish plating the dish, though not without casting sideways glances at one another the whole time, both of us finding excuses to lean around each other so that our hands brush, our shoulders bump, our elbows touch as we work. In what feels like no time at all, we have a full dinner prepared, and as the chef makes another round of the room to check that everyone’s ready, we finally perch on our stools, ready to eat.
A wine sommelier joins the class to discuss the wines they selected to pair with the meal we cooked, but honestly, half of whatever he’s saying just goes in one ear and out the other for me. I can’t stop stealing glances at Chloe, distracted by the serious, studious expression on her face as she listens to the sommelier speak, drawn in by the way her eyebrows knit together when she’s concentrating, and the adorable little moue her mouth makes when she’s swirling the wine glass the way he shows us, to draw out the flavors we’re supposed to be tasting.
Normally I love this class, but tonight, Chloe draws all my attention. The way her perfect, hazel-gold eyes flutter closed as she sips her wine, the expression of surprised delight on her face when she tastes a buttery slice of the fish we made; it’s more intoxicating to me than any flavor ever could be.
As we’re settling in to enjoy our food, the class portion over, Chloe leans her shoulder against mine, perched on the edge of her stool.
“Paul told me not to be like him,” she says as she cuts through her fish.
“What’s so bad about being like him?” I raise my eyebrows. “He’s successful, well-respected in his field, looked up to by tons of people. He’s kind of your idol, isn’t he?”
She quirks a tiny smile. “That’s what I said. But he told me he regrets spending too much of his time on work. He wishes he lived outside of the office, too.” She glances up at me with a sigh.
“That’s a lesson we could both stand to listen to, I think,” I murmur softly. Then I cut a piece from my own fish, spear it on my fork, and extend it to her to try. “But this is a good start, right?”
She locks eyes with me as she leans in to wrap her lips around my fork, drawing the fish off of the tines in a slow, sinuous motion that makes my blood pump faster. Her tongue lashes out to lick around her lips, purposeful, her gaze still on mine, and my cock stiffens against my jeans. “A pretty good start, I’d say,” she says, still smirking.
Damn. She knows exactly how to get to me.
Good thing I know her weaknesses too. I rest one hand on her knee, and trail the very tips of my fingers up her thigh, hardly touching her at all, just lightly enough that she’ll feel the pressure. When my hand reaches her upper thigh, I pull away and turn back to my food. “It’s a start, anyway.”
When I glance back at her again, Chloe has her eyes narrowed, her legs crossed, and she looks slightly uncomfortable. Revenge is a great feeling. But she’s grinning, too, even as she glares at me. “To be continued,” she says, her voice low and dark with promise.
Oh, it’s on now.
27
Chloe
By the time we reach my doorstep, I’m ready to tear Max’s clothes off right here and now. He’s been teasing me all night, touching me and then drawing his hand away at the last moment. Especially in the cab, his palm slipping under my shirt so I could feel his bare skin against the small of my back, hot as a forest fire, and yet the moment I shifted toward him, he’d draw back again.
To be fair, I’d done my fair share of torture/teasing right back. Every time I took a bite of anything, especially the ice cream the restaurant served us for dessert, I made sure to lock eyes with him and take my time licking the fork or spoon clean, my mouth parted just enough so that he could see my tongue working.
Now we’re finally back at my place, and I’ve had more than enough of this tension to last a lifetime. Before I even finish turning my keys in the lock, I whip around to throw my arms around his neck, and he lifts me in his arms, my legs wrapped around his hips, his mouth ravaging mine as we crash through my apartment door.
We don’t make it to the bedroom, or even to the couch. We stagger into the kitchen, right inside my entrance, and he balances my ass on the granite countertop as he pushes my skintight skirt up around my waist. I squeal a little as my bare ass, exposed in my tiny, bright red thong, hits cool granite. But things don’t take long to heat up, as he sli
des one hand under my ass to grip me roughly, his other hand tugging at my blouse. He pulls too hard, and buttons pop, go flying across the kitchen. Neither of us care.
“I need you right fucking now,” he growls. He rips the shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it aside, his mouth already hot on my skin, sucking at my neck, my collarbone, working his way toward my aching breasts.
“Take me,” I gasp, leaning back against the counter and bury one hand in his thick hair, gripping hard for balance, as I slide my other hand over his chest. He’s wearing a button-down too, so I return the favor and yank until it parts, his buttons joining mine on the kitchen floor. His shirt hangs open, and I trace my hand over his now-familiar chest, his solid abs and that irresistible little V by his hips, leading down, pointing like an arrow toward that gorgeous cock. I trace both sides of that V with my palm flat against his skin, and enjoy the way his muscles tighten beneath my fingers.
I have every bit as strong an effect on him as he does on me, and I fucking love seeing him react to me.
Suddenly, he steps forward, pinning me against the counter with his weight, and reaches up to push my glasses up my forehead into my hair.
“Miss MacIntyre.” He levels his gaze at me, and a shiver runs through me at the command in his tone. That reaction makes him grin. “You’ve been accused of being too sexy for your own good.”
He dips one finger down the center of my chest and traces his way under my breast, pressing just hard enough that I feel the pressure of his finger, the subtle brush of his nail bed on my sensitive skin. When his finger crosses around the top of my breast and circles my tight nipple, barely touching so lightly, I have to fight the urge to squirm. “How do you plead?” he murmurs.
I wriggle a little against the counter, and his fingers close around my nipple in a hard pinch.
I gasp, my neck arcing to the side, startled. Then I fix my eyes on his, and curl my lips into a smile. “I’m afraid I’m guilty, Your Honor.”
“I see.” He runs his finger down my side, following the curve of my waist, around to brush over my ass, still lightly, hardly touching me, and leaving a trail of goosebumps in his wake. “What on earth are we going to do with you, then, Miss MacIntyre.”
