Hate to Lose You

by Penny Wylder

  After he fucked me in his living room last night, we retreated here to the bedroom and wound up going at it again. And again in the middle of the night, because he’s as insatiable as ever, it turns out. But now, in the dimmed light of the morning filtering through his overpriced fancy windows, I’m starting to remember why all of this was a bad idea.

  “Listen, Bronson, about last night…” I turn toward him, but he withdraws his hand at once, only to place a fingertip over my lips.

  “Me first. Please?” he adds, a pleading light in his eyes, probably because I’m glaring and about to argue in response.

  I sigh and roll over onto my back, mostly so I don’t have to gaze into those tantalizing, magnetic gray eyes of his. Eyes that lock me in place anytime our eyes meet. Eyes that make me say and do stupid shit, and forget that I ought to be angry. “Shoot,” I tell the ceiling instead. Fuck, I think absentmindedly, gazing up in said direction. Even his ceiling looks expensive.

  “I’m sorry,” he starts.

  “Go on,” I say, when he hesitates. To be fair, he did promise me an apology when he sent those flowers. And I don’t think I ever fully heard one last night. Granted, we were both pretty distracted all evening. But still.

  “I should have told you the truth.” He traces his hand up to my collarbone. Trails his fingertips absently across my skin, distracted yet casual. Again, everything with him just feels so damn easy. Like a dance we’ve done a thousand times. “I should have told you who I was, or at the very least explained everything when I left. But my father…” He trails off again.

  A frown appears between my brows. I turn toward him, prop myself up on one elbow, just in time to see him shake his head and run a hand over his eyes.

  “No,” he says, finally. “I’ve blamed him for too long, but it comes down to me. I should have told you.” He swallows hard enough that his Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “I was in a really bad spot with debt when I met you, Daisy,” he says. “Collectors were after me—and not the credit card kind, either. Rough guys, guys who… well. Guys you wouldn’t want to meet down a dark alley. Definitely not the kind you want to owe favors and large sums of cash to.”

  My eyes widen. Whatever kind of an explanation I’d expected for his behavior, it wasn’t this.

  But he’s not finished. “I was trying to keep a low profile, but they found me. Roughed me up. Bad.” His eyes finally meet mine, not without a wince though. “They mentioned you, when they were beating me. I thought…” He shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I just didn’t want to drag you into my mess. So after my father bailed me out, and after he made me promise to return here to LA and retake the spot I was supposed to be in all along, start training to inherit this company… I mean, I owed him a huge, impossible to repay favor after all that. But more than that… I figured it was the best move for everyone involved. You included. Those debt collectors were going to leave me alone after that; they wouldn’t come after you too, if I was long gone…”

  I search his gaze, my throat tightening. Before, I was pissed at him. Now, I’m just picturing Bronson beaten and bruised, limping back here to LA. It makes my chest ache. However I felt about him when he left, I never wanted him to be hurt.

  Suddenly, I’m not angry anymore. I’m just sad. Sad for Bronson and the life he had to flee. Sad for myself, that I don’t fit in here to his new life plans. “It doesn’t matter,” I murmur. “I have to leave LA soon anyway. We won’t see each other again after that.”

  His eyes widen. “What are you talking about?” His hand tightens around my side. “Is it… I mean, did I… was it something I said, something I did?”

  “It’s not you.” I shrug one shoulder. Nod in his direction. “I’ve got things I need to deal with too. Life stuff. You understand.”

  “Daisy.” He traces his hand up to my shoulder, my jawline. He cups a hand under my chin and tilts my face toward his. “Whatever’s wrong, we can figure it out together. Just tell me about it. That’s what we need to do, be open with one another.”

  I bite my lower lip. “Openness can’t fix everything, you know.” I sigh. “I need to leave, Bronson, that’s all. I need out of LA, I need out of this company—”

  “You can’t,” he blurts.

  I frown. “Yes, I’m pretty sure I can.”

  “No, I mean… You can’t leave the company, Daisy. Not now.”

  I sit up in bed, my earlier sympathy and sorrow replaced by fresh annoyance. “You can’t tell me what to do, Bronson. You don’t know what’s going on in my life—”

  “And you don’t know what’s going on in mine!” He pulls away from me and runs a hand through his hair, tugging on the ends. “Please, Daisy, you have to stay. How can I make you?”

  I shove away too, pushing myself to the far corner of the bed, where I climb off it and start to fish beneath it for my clothes, which we finally kicked completely off somewhere around here last night. “You can’t just make me do what you want, Bronson,” I call over my shoulder as I fish out my shirt first, and start to tug it over my head.

  He springs across the bed toward me, and stops me after I’ve pulled it on, spinning me around to face him, his hands on my shoulders. “Just listen, please. You have to stay. I’ll lose everything if you don’t.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Define everything.”

  “My position, my inheritance, my place in the family. Everything.” He gazes into my eyes, as though willing me to understand.

  And oh, I do all right. I scoff hard in the back of my throat and reach up to shove his hands off my shoulders. “I see. So once again, this is about your billionaire inheritance and how you need to run off to do whatever it takes to maintain it.”

  “It’s not just the money,” he starts, but I talk over him, grabbing my skirt from the floor and striding toward the exit, snatching my bra from where it dangles on a lamp along the way.

  “If you really think that’s losing everything, Bronson, then you don’t know a thing about what real loss is,” I’m yelling as I walk. In my mind’s eye, all I can picture is my mother the last time I spoke to her over video chat. How thin she looked, how pale she’d gotten, when she was normally so tan and muscled from working out in her garden every spare hour of the day. She was getting weaker, shrinking into herself. All while I was out here toiling away at a shitty company to try and make enough money to get by.

  And Bronson wants me to feel sorry for him that he might lose billions of dollars that he never even had to work for in the first place? He’s just had everything handed to him on a platter, his entire life. Even that debt he says he got himself into—it sounded terrible, but he had someone to call. One phone call to his father and his daddy leapt in and fixed everything, paid him out from under that debt.

  If I’d been the one in debt? If it had been Mom’s medical bills I’d gone to some shady lender in order to cover? I’d have no get-out-of-jail free card. I’d have had to cover it all myself. Work my ass off for years upon years, likely in more jobs I hated.

  Bronson’s never had to do that, not really. He might choose to work, but not because he has no other options. It’s not the same. And he’ll never understand what it’s like to be in my shoes.

  “Daisy, wait,” he calls, chasing after me into the living room as I’m yanking on my skirt. “Let me explain. It’s my last chance with my dad. I already screwed up a lot when I was younger. I want to prove to him I’m not gonna screw things up this time. I want to be a better person—isn’t that a good thing?”

  “You can’t be a better person by ordering everyone around you to follow your rules,” I snap. “And if you think money is the most important thing in the world; the only thing you can lose, well…” I shake my head. “I don’t even know how to explain to you how wrong you are.”

  With that, I finish zipping my skirt. I look like a mess, disheveled, stuffing my bra into my purse, with my blouse tucked into my skirt in a way that obviously advertises I stayed out all night, and exactly what I
was doing while I was out. But I decide I don’t care anymore. I want to be home now. Four nosy roommates and all.

  More than that, I just want to be away from him. Because he clouds my judgment, makes my head fuzzy, when I should know better by now.

  “Goodbye, Bronson,” I call over my shoulder as I push the button for his elevator. Luckily it zips right to the floor—it must have been hovering nearby at one of the other penthouse apartments in this crazy building. I step inside and hit the only button there is, an option for the lobby.

  When I glance back up, it’s just in time to watch his face crumple in sorrow. Then the doors shut after me, and I glide toward the ground floor, and solitude.

  10

  Bronson

  How did I fuck this up again?

  That’s the refrain on repeat in my brain as I try to work out the best way to convince Daisy to stay. To give me a chance. If not a chance to date her, then at least a chance to retain her at the bank, because my father’s warning still echoes in the back of my mind. If you lose one single individual employee from the staff this time, that’s it.

  I walked away from my parents and my life once before, but I’d always retained a fallback option. My father had never officially disinherited me—and, if I’m honest, I always knew he wouldn’t. Not then. Besides, I was too busy living it up to think much about my future, back in my gambling my life away in Vegas days.

  Now, however… Now I’m old enough to realize that without my father’s intercession with those casino thugs, I’d have wound up dead in a ditch somewhere. I’m also old enough to know that I won’t be able to make money like this anywhere else. And I need money like this if I ever want to settle down, start a real life, especially with someone like Daisy.

  I could take care of her. Buy us a really nice house, start the family she hinted more than once that she dreamed about. But I can’t do that if I’m some broke nobody, a disgraced disinherited bum whose own father couldn’t even see fit to keep him employed. And without my father, without the lifeline he represents…

  I shake my head at myself in the bathroom mirror. It’s Monday morning. The first day back in the office. My first time facing Daisy again after she walked out on me Saturday morning. I need to convince her to stay. To give me a shot. If nothing else, I want to know why she’s so desperate to go. Was it me? Or the company? Or just, everything?

  I finished shaving off the weekend stubble from my jawline, and towel my face off with a sigh, before I reach for the aftershave. One way or another, I’m going to get some answers today.

  My phone rings at 9am sharp. I pick it up, and hear the breathy voice of our new front desk manager on the other end. “You asked me to call when Ms. Rider arrived?” she says.

  “Thank you, Cheryl,” I respond.

  “A pleasure, Mr. Burke,” she answers right away, in a way that reminds me how often I’ve caught her stealing sideways glances at my ass, or winking seductively when I stride past her into the office. We’ve only been here a week and already she’s treating me like a piece of walking man candy.

  I need to watch myself around this one. I hang up without another word and stand up, striding out of my private office and out into the common area. Well, Cheryl might be overly flirty, but she’s effective—right on cue, Daisy steps through the doors into the main office section, walking toward her desk with purpose.

  She’s dressed down today, for her at least, in flats and a baggy cardigan, which unfortunately for me hides those curves I adore. She even has on what appear to be sweatpants.

  What on earth?

  I don’t pause too long to wonder. I stride across the office, making a beeline for her desk. “Ms. Rider,” I say, loud enough for people at the surrounding desks to hear, before she’s even had a chance to set her purse down on the desk. “Can I see you in my office?”

  She startles, then visibly forces herself to still before she spins to face me. When she does, her eyes and her posture are both hard as iron. “Is it important?”

  “Very,” I reply, gaze locked on hers.

  She narrows those baby blues. “I just got here, Mr. Burke,” she says, laying a little heavily on my last name. “Can’t it wait a minute until I settle in?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I reply smoothly. “It’s urgent.”

  “Urgent and important,” she repeats, a note of sarcasm in her tone. A couple people around us are starting to notice the conversation. Heads turn, and in the distance, I can spot whisperers near the water cooler starting to gossip already. Probably guessing whether Daisy Rider is next on the notorious Bronson Burke’s chopping block—since I have an (admittedly earned) reputation for firing people around here.

  If only they knew the truth, I think, and it makes me clench my jaw to avoid smirking at a completely inopportune moment.

  Daisy has no such compunctions. She rests a hand on her hip and brings that Southern drawl out to brawl. “If you could give me a hint what this is all about, Mr. Burke, I’d be happy to accompany you to this urgent meeting.”

  “It’s about the work environment here,” I reply smoothly, “And how I’d like to improve it for the entire office.”

  She smirks. “Well, then, perhaps you ought to invite the entire office in to discuss this.”

  “I plan to,” I answer, silently cursing her for that. Now I’m going to have to sit in meetings taking complaints all day. But to judge by her self-satisfied expression, she knows exactly what kind of a corner she just backed me into. “But I’m starting with you,” I say, “since you were the first person to express your concerns to me in private so far.”

  Her eyes tighten at that. She can’t exactly deny it, not with all these onlookers. So she purses her lips instead. “Good,” she answers. “I’m glad someone is finally planning on listening to what the lower-level employees at this company think, instead of just polling those at the very top reaping all the rewards for working here.”

  Startled laughs burst out of a couple of the desks nearest to us, and a spate of loud whispers break out as those near enough to catch what Daisy just said start repeating it to those positioned farther away in the office. I don’t stay to watch. I just smile and extend a hand to guide her in front of me. “After you,” I say.

  She struts up the hall toward my office with her spine stiff, her fists clenched at her sides. She holds her conscience this time, though. At least until I follow her into my private office and shut the door behind us.

  Then she whirls on me in an explosion of fury. “If you think you’re going to win me back with some cheap trick like the asshole boss in Naughty Secretary—” she starts, but abruptly stops when I burst into laughter.

  “I’m not trying to manipulate you, Daisy,” I say when the laughter just makes her fists clench harder. “In fact, I agree with what you said out there.”

  She blinks, startled. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, you’re right about the people at the top. That’s how I wound up in this position in the first place, actually. Nepotism, and a healthy dose of my father thinking I’d just go along with the way he’s been running things all along.” I stride past her to my desk and take a seat in front of it rather than behind it. There are two chairs side-by-side here, and it seems less like a formal employer-employee chat to me. But when I gesture to the other chair, inviting Daisy to sit, she just leans against the back of it, still standing, towering over me now. The first time she’s ever been taller than me, since I stand a good head and more over her normally.

  I’ve got to admit, it’s kind of hot. I smirk at her, and she narrows her eyes at me. “So you agree the company you’re poised to inherit is a corrupt mess.” She rolls her eyes. “Good for you. What are you actually going to do about it, though?”

  “Well, for starters,” I say, “I fired the upper management at this branch after they drove a whole group of employees into quitting. Twice,” I add.

  She lifts a single eyebrow. “So that’s what happened here?”

/>   I nod. “We had two employees who had been at the company forever. My father turned a blind eye to how badly they were treating people—he told me they were loyal to us for so long that we needed to reward their loyalty. Never mind that they were taking advantage of their positions, making everyone beneath them work triply hard while they lounged around skimming off the top and doing nothing. Everyone kept quitting in droves, and my father was happy to just let things continue as they were all along.”

  She crosses her arms. “It’s not just here,” she says. “That’s how the other branch I worked at was run too. It’s why I got transferred, actually.” Her cheeks redden a little. “I complained to the branch manager. I was hoping he’d fire me, actually, because you offer such a good severance package, even for people who haven’t been here very long.” She scowls. “Instead, he sent me here. He said he thought I’d have more opportunities here.” She rolls her eyes again. “More opportunities to stuff my foot in my mouth, more like.”

  “Not at all,” I reply. “You’re saying what needs to be heard. I admire that kind of courage. I wish more people at this company would do the same.” I shake my head. “I’ll be honest, though, that severance package is why my father was extra furious with me for firing those two managers. They’d been here so long, the amount we had to pay to get rid of them…” I run my hand through my hair. “But, it doesn’t matter. It’s done now. Problem solved. Now I just need to prove to my father that I can run this branch the right way; that I can stop people quitting, where those two drove them to it.” I turn my gaze back to her. “That’s why I need you to stay, Daisy. If there’s any way you can—”

  “I can’t,” she cuts across. “And I can’t quit, either. Bronson.” She slides into the seat next to me, finally, and reaches out to rest a hand on my knee. “I need you to fire me.”