Bea stands and slides a few inches away from me, as though she wasn’t baiting me and I wasn’t fishing. “Nothing. I was telling Dylan not to try Holly’s baking.”
“Good thing.” Yasmin disregards what she thought she witnessed and proceeds to the fridge.
Great, she hasn’t eaten yet.
“I found an egg shell in a tart one time.” Her eyes widen as she holds a Tupperware container in her hand.
“Oh, Yas, what do you have for lunch today?” Bea slides into the chair next to me, crossing her legs and leaning forward.
Seriously, this girl could seduce the Pope and have him questioning his beliefs.
“Boiled fish with rice.” She opens the container, and an aroma of saffron leaks out.
She moves to the microwave, and I know I won’t be able to tolerate the smell, so I stand to leave the room.
“I gotta return to my desk. Will you be eating in the break room today, Yasmin?” I ask, hopeful that I can have a one-day break from the smell of her diet food. I think it’s fantastic that she’s lost thirty pounds, but if the girl could just eat in the break room, I wouldn’t mind sharing an office space with her.
“Oh, no, I have a call in fifteen.” She smiles, waiting next to the microwave.
Needing to escape before the heat waves hit my nostrils, I swiftly move to the door.
“I have to finish up the Fraedrich’s account. See you both later.” Bea follows me.
Once in the hallway, I finally breathe.
“Not liking the smells, huh?” Bea laughs, sipping her coffee again. Her heels click on the tiled floor, only making me remember the look of her legs from minutes ago.
Focus forward, and don’t look down.
“Hell no. I need out. Is there any other office space available for me?”
She laughs. “No, I’m sorry. Not until someone makes senior exec.”
She crosses her fingers in the air, and I hate myself for knowing that a spot is being held for me when Bea’s been here for years.
“Hopefully, that happens soon.” I stop us at the crossroads where I’ll turn left and she’ll continue straight. “So, your house?”
A seductive smile crosses her lips. My dirty mind and I could go there with her in a second, but we can’t. Not if I want to keep my job.
“Yeah. You good with that? Don’t be late, McCain.”
She swivels on those black heels, and I can’t help but stare at that round ass as she walks away from me.
“Oh God, you, too,” Yasmin says from behind me.
I cough and swallow down the bile rising up my throat from the smell of her food.
“What?” I ask. Being an ill-mannered gentleman, I walk in front of her just to delay my imprisonment of being downstream from her food.
“Everyone always wants Bea, but you know, she’s kind of—” She stops talking.
I think I know where she’s going, but I’m going to act dumb for the moment. “What?”
“The company pass-around. She’s been with almost every guy in the office—except for Kevin, but that’s obvious.”
“How do you know?”
“Rumors, gossip. People don’t keep those things tight-lipped.”
“So, she’s dated several of the guys here?” I portray a front, as though a knife didn’t just jab me in the chest. Why I care, I have no idea. We’ve agreed—platonic friends.
“Not dated. Slept with.” She shrugs her shoulders. “I mean, whatever she wants to do, I suppose, but maybe that’s why she’s still a junior exec after two and a half years.” Her lips move into a straight line, and she arches one eyebrow.
“Oh, well, gossip is always accurate, isn’t it?”
She stops, her eyes now narrowing at me. “Believe what you want, but I have reliable sources.”
“I wouldn’t think otherwise—unless your reliable sources are jealous and petty, impending on other people’s lives. Whether she’s slept with zero, one, or fifty, whose business is it, really?” I ask, taking my seat and logging into my computer.
Yasmin sits in hers, taking the cover off her food, embedding the smell of fish throughout the small space. My head falls back in annoyance.
“People shouldn’t do things if they don’t want others to know. She’s sleeping to get to the top, Dylan. There are high people on her list,” Yasmin says.
Then, her phone rings, and I release a breath for the break from her mouth. If only I could cover up her food and throw it out the seventeenth-floor window to spread across the street of Detroit, but no such luck. I’ll have to take the reprieve of her mouth in the meantime.
I figured Bea wasn’t exactly closed-legged. I mean, she came on to me in the first five minutes of meeting me. She touched my tattoos and cooed at everything I’d said. It was clear that she’d have fucked me if I had taken her around the side of the Ashbys’ house, but Ava had fucked with me so mercilessly that morning that I couldn’t even screw her out of my head. So, I put up the front that I wasn’t really interested in her body but her mind—until that night at Breaker’s. Then, it was game over, and I couldn’t fight it anymore. I needed to be inside her.
I’m not sure how much longer I can hold off for a second round. That nice guy in me fights it because, deep down, I don’t want a random stream of hook-ups. I liked having a relationship—someone to come home to, to love, and to go to dinner with. I’m not sure Bea wants the same though, and I’d rather keep my distance than break my heart again in this life.
Bea
DYLAN’S LIKE A BAG OF mixed nuts. I never know whom I’m going to get when I run into him. He seems to be confused as to who he is or who he should be. One minute, he’s sweet; the next, cranky; and, sometimes, he’s downright indifferent to anything and anyone.
One consistent quality of his is his concern for others. He tries to hide the appealing trait, but even John, the nicest guy on our team, told Yasmin that she had to eat her lunch in the break room after she’d started her diet. It’s great that it works for her, but others shouldn’t have to suffer. Dylan sits in that crowded area, smelling the aroma of her boiled fish and whatever else she’s read that will shed the pounds. He says nothing even though he’s gagging at his desk. He’s trying to disguise that he’s a nice guy, and I’m not sure why.
Thankfully, the last few hours fly by. I’m packing up my bag when John leans in close to my ear. I draw back from his nearness.
“Personal space,” I comment.
He laughs. “Who’s the date?”
“Date?”
“I saw you all over the Food Network site. You’re making dinner for someone?” A coy smile sneaks up his lips.
“My mother, if you must know.”
He coughs out, “Bullshit.”
I zip up my bag and swing it over my shoulder.
“It wouldn’t be the hot Clark Kent now, would it? I saw the two of you all cozy in the break room earlier.”
Immediately, my heart rate picks up because, other than having dinner with Dylan and maybe a few hours of being tangled in my sheets, I’m not looking to be involved in the gossip thread. I’ve been there and done that more than once. Yasmin thinks we’re friends, but I know what she says, and that’s why I keep her close. Not that it stops her from spreading untruths about me.
“Try a heartbroken fifty year old woman.” I escape our cubicle with a straight face. How? I have no idea. I’ve never been good at the whole deceiving thing.
“Whatever you say, Lois Lane,” he calls over the partition.
I roll my eyes, not taking any chances of turning around and him seeing my smirk.
I reach the elevator doors before they close. At the end of the day, the ride down could take me twenty minutes with how crowded the elevators become since the whole building leaves at the same time. Slipping through the closing doors, I breathe a sigh of relief that I got the last spot.
As I stand there while the elevator stops and opens on each floor, I contemplate what I should cook tonight. What I
witnessed Dylan eating that weekend of the wedding. Mostly, it was whatever Mrs. Ashby had prepared or bar food from the numerous drinking establishments.
Then, someone files out on the tenth floor, and a wave of cologne hits me—Dylan’s cologne. Automatically, my head swivels behind me, expecting to see those green eyes that have recently unglued me. Disappointment fills me when I realize it must have been the guy who left.
Clearly, I’m going crazy, so I clutch my bag around me, determined to be the first one out of the claustrophobic confines. The elevator stops, the doors open on the first floor, and I’m out immediately, but when I see who’s waiting in the lobby, my eager footsteps halt.
My stepbrother is standing in the foyer, his arms tucked into his expensive slacks, with his hair gelled into place. He catches me in the mob of people frustratingly weaving around me, and his lips curl. We’re never happy to see one another.
I inhale a reassuring breath and walk toward him.
“Austin,” I say.
He reaches around me, giving me a half hug. If we weren’t in my office building, I’d shove him off me.
“It’s good to see you,” he says.
I roll my eyes. “Why are you here?” I cross my arms over my chest and pin my eyes on him.
“Can I take you to dinner?”
“Um, no.”
I move to walk around him, but he gently touches my arm. I retract it away.
“Don’t touch me,” I seethe through my teeth, my blood starting to boil over.
“Honeybee.”
I close my eyes, partially to push back the tears at his nickname for me and also to give me time to compose myself.
I turn around, narrowing my eyes at him, wishing daggers would fly out of them and shatter his heart, like he did mine. “The name is Bea.” I grab his arm and pull him into the corner, away from the hustle from the ending workday.
Once his expensive suit is pressed to the marble wall of my office building, I lean in close, so no one else can hear me. I’m the one in control, holding the cards, this time. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re here, but leave. You’re my past, and I left you there eight years ago.”
Without waiting for an answer, I turn around and start to walk away.
“That’s why I’m here—to apologize,” he says.
I stop, thinking of all the nights I waited for him to come and apologize for what he did. That was, until I grew up and realized my mom was right. Fairy tales are bullshit, and princes don’t go searching out princesses.
“Go home, Austin.”
I STUMBLE THROUGH THE SHRIMP pasta dish that I’m cooking for Dylan because the past is a wicked tornado that spins back to you when you thought it’d moved on.
Austin’s reappearance threw me into a whole new direction. He looked just like I always imagined. An expensive suit and an even pricier watch adorning his wrist. Sandy-blond hair gelled into perfection with those cheekbones already rosy. His eyes might have looked a little kinder today than the last time I’d seen him, but he doesn’t deserve my time. Apology, my ass. I gave up waiting for his sorry-ass apology years ago. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the past doesn’t still dictate my future. Trust is a hard thing to gain back, and every man after him has felt the repercussions from his actions.
I was seventeen, and my mom had just married Austin’s father. We were in the Hamptons for the summer. Austin was an only child, like me, and I had some crazy notion that we’d become close. His mom had died when he was younger, and his dad was a nice guy, so I never suspected that he was the nightmare of rich boys.
My mom convinced Austin’s dad to leave halfway through the summer to go to Europe. Although he was hesitant to leave Austin, who was only nineteen, and me by ourselves, my mom promised him we were old enough. I admittedly egged it on a little just because I didn’t want to be around my mom. If I’d known what would happen in the coming months, I wouldn’t have been so eager not to have parental supervision.
Austin’s friends immediately started occupying the house. First, it was outrageous parties, and I’d wake to find them sprinkled all over the floor until two of them moved in completely. Regularly, they’d be smoking pot or snorting lines of coke. How underage kids were able to buy alcohol on the level they did, I had no idea. When they said that money couldn’t buy everything, they weren’t talking about the Hamptons.
Austin and I had become close over the last two weeks our parents had been gone. I’d regularly make him breakfast when he was hungover, and he’d grill for me at dinner. A few times, he, his friends, and I would watch a movie. We’d gone on the boat and Jet Skis, and I laughed more than I had most of my life.
We were truly becoming siblings, but to be honest, there was an attraction on my part. He was a nineteen-year-old college boy with sun-kissed highlights and bright blue eyes. He could have stepped off the cover of a J.Crew catalog. In my mind, he was the elite, the one who people wished they’d grow up to be. Silver-spoon babies who were born rich. To me, he was fun-loving and down to earth—at least, as much as a down-to-earth rich boy could be.
One night, I was lying on the lounge chair, staring at the stars, trying to remember which one was which. I was wondering where I’d be next year, hoping like hell this marriage would pan out between my mom and Austin’s dad.
Austin came over with two beers. He lay on the chair next to me. My throat dried. Something was different tonight.
I wasn’t a huge beer drinker, but I wanted to seem cool, so I took a sip. Soon, I was pointing out the stars to Austin, and before I knew it, his hand was on my leg.
“Do you ever think of me?” he asked, sliding on his side to stare directly at me.
“I see you every minute of the day, so I don’t have to.” I continued to concentrate on the sky and not the uncomfortable feeling that was overcoming the ocean air.
“You know what I mean. I think about you at night. That pink bikini you were wearing earlier? I’ve thought about what’s underneath.”
His finger slid over my bare shoulder, and I closed my eyes.
I’d come to regret my next move and wish I’d done something differently in that moment, but I was seventeen and had a crush on my recent stepbrother.
“We’re related now.” The quiver in my voice wasn’t missed by him.
He knew how I felt. He’d probably seen my lingering eyes on him since our parents’ nuptials.
“Barely and not by blood.” His hand slowly and gently moved up until he held my cheek in it.
My heart rate spiked, and my breathing staggered. He was going to be my first real kiss. Tidbits of advice from Kami Carmichael, my best friend until we’d moved, rang through my head.
“Allow him to put his tongue in first and then meet his.”
Oh, damn. Suddenly, I wasn’t lost in the moment of my first kiss. I was on the brink of an anxiety attack.
“Hey,” he said.
I blinked, and his eyes held mine with affection. Affection for me. I hadn’t seen that in anyone’s eyes before.
“It’s just me,” he added.
Between his words and his eyes, I felt safe for the first time in my life, as though I were a heroine in a book and he’d slay the monsters chasing me.
He brought his mouth down on mine as his thumb brushed my cheek in a caressing manner. As he continued to move along my lips, his tongue snuck through my opening. I had no idea what to do with my hands, so they gripped the seat cushion on the lounge chair. When he pulled back, my neck arched, as I wanted more, but he smiled down at me, his teeth sliding across his bottom lip, as he stared down at me.
“You’re a guilty pleasure,” he whispered.
A giggle leaked out, showing my age. But he didn’t make fun of me. He only continued to smile with approval.
“Was it okay?” he asked.
I wanted to gush about how wonderful it was. I wanted to scream how excited I was to have my first kiss. To call Kami and say I didn’t need her advice because Austin Quinn knew h
ow to kiss a girl until her toes curled.
“Yeah,” I softly said, happily giddy that I hadn’t embarrassed myself.
Then, he left and brought back two bowls of ice cream for us.
His kissing game happened for a few weeks. His hands caressed my breasts, but he was taking his time—his time to seduce me—and it worked.
A week later, I went willingly into his bedroom and allowed him to take my virginity. When I left his room the next morning, I felt more loved than any other time in my life.
Adolescent girl stupidity.
A knock on the door brings me back from the nightmare of my first time. I place the spoon down from the sauce I’ve now overly stirred.
My hand lands on the doorknob, and I glance down at my jeans-and-T-shirt-clad self, hoping Dylan won’t see the torment I just caused myself by reliving the memory of Austin. I plaster on my cocky smirk and square my shoulders back as I pry the door open.
Dylan rocks back on his heels as he pushes up his glasses with his forefinger, and I wait for him to do a quick intake of my appearance.
“Hey,” he says in the sultriest voice, the same tone he used the first time I met him.
“Hi.” I open the door for him to enter my private space, a space I don’t share with many.
He walks by me, and my eyes veer to his perfect ass snuggled into his jeans. When he shrugs off his jacket, I grab it from him, trying not to admire the way his T-shirt strains along his broad shoulders or the tattoos peeking out of his sleeves.
“Make yourself comfortable.” I hang up his light jacket in the hall closet.
By the time I return, he’s sitting down on the couch with his elbows on his knees. His body doesn’t scream uncomfortable, but he’s not at ease.
Taking a deep breath, I walk along the back of the couch, heading straight to the kitchen. “Would you like a beer?” I open the fridge before he answers.
“That would be great.” The nearness of his voice alerts me that he’s on the move, which only makes that flutter more noticeable in my stomach. “You have a great place.”
He leans his hip along my breakfast bar, and I can see the question in his eyes. How do I afford this place on a junior exec salary? Some details are better left alone, and that one absolutely is.
Love Emerged (Love Surfaced #3) Page 4
