Chapter 17 We’re Inevitable
WE’RE INEVITABLE
Favorite song?
Cole: Debussy’s Clair de Lune. It relaxes me.
Bridget: You’re such a nerd. My favorite is “Dreams” by The Cranberries. My parents used to sing along to it at volume when I was a kid. The lyrics were light and happy. Good memories.
brIDGET
“Look, Bridget.” I met my own stare in the mirror in my hotel room. “You didn’t get where you are by not meeting conflict head-on. You have to talk to him before you go back.”
That pair of near-kisses had festered for far too long.
Almost every time I’d looked over at him as we relaxed by the pool, I’d caught him staring at me.
Which meant I couldn’t ogle his muscular legs under his swim trunks.
In three days, we’d head back to the city, and the day after, I’d get my emergency passport.
When we returned to the office, we had to be perfectly clear on where we stood.
Firmly in the colleague zone. Especially since he had a girlfriend.
I shook my head, my eyes going wide. That he had a girlfriend wasn’t the most important part.
We were co-CEOs. Competitors. It was completely inappropriate for us to be anything else.
If our employees found out—if the board found out—my career would go straight down the drain like one of those power-flush toilets my dad coveted at the hardware store.
Tessa had made the mistake of sleeping with her number two at her startup, and the stain on her career had taken years to wipe clean.
I smoothed down my dress and checked that there was no lipstick on my teeth. Then I grabbed my handbag and my key card and stepped into the hall.
Cole’s room was a few doors down from mine, and he waited for me. He wore his suit from the visit to the office last week. It looked freshly pressed, and he’d shaved his scruff. He crooked an elbow. “Happy Thanksgiving, Bridget. You look lovely,” he purred.
“Ew.” If I hadn’t overheard that conversation with his girlfriend, I might’ve fallen for his flirting. I clutched my bag with both hands. “I can walk without support, thank you.”
“Of course.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked beside me to the elevator. Silently, we rode down to the ground floor, and I led the way to the restaurant.
When we were seated at a table for two, he picked up the wine menu. “Do you mind if I…?”
“No, it’s fine.” The conversation we needed to have might go better with a little lubrication.
After we’d placed our orders and the sommelier brought the wine Cole selected, Cole raised his glass. “To a successful site visit and corporate retreat, and to the woman who planned them both.”
My cheeks heated. “Thank you. You think the retreat was successful?”
“We spent time together, and we all know each other better now. We had some good planning sessions, and everyone has their focus areas for the next quarter. Plus, that game of capture the flag”—his jaw ticked for a second—“helped with team unity. I’d call it successful. You shouldn’t need me to tell you.”
“It’s nice to hear someone else say it.” I straightened my fork and knife. “I’m surprised you admit it.”
He spread his hands wide. “We don’t have to be enemies, despite how the board set us up. We can be whatever we want to be.”
“No, we can’t. I mean, of course we can. What I mean is…I’m sorry I crossed the line the other day after we fell into the river. And, um.” I winced. “When I almost touched you inappropriately in the hot spring.”
He leaned back and swirled his glass of red wine. “I’m not sorry.”
Heat flared in my belly. “Oh my god, that’s so gross. I knew you were ruthless, but I didn’t think you were unprincipled.”
“Unprincipled? What’s wrong with two consenting adults acting on an obvious attraction? Our animosity was nothing more than unfulfilled sexual tension. We’re inevitable, Bridget, like opposite poles of magnets.”
I wouldn’t let him distract me with his unfulfilled sexual tension. “We’re no such thing.” I lowered my voice. “You have a girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” He set down his wineglass. “No, I don’t.”
“Don’t lie to me. I heard you on the phone with her. With Cait.”
He stared at me for a moment, then he laughed long and loud. “Cait.” He stopped to laugh again. “Caitlyn is my daughter.”
“Your…daughter?” My brain went offline. Cole was a tech bro whose only responsibility was perfecting his physique. He couldn’t be a dad. That’d force me to rebuild my image of him.
“Her mother Zara and I have been divorced for four years. I haven’t dated anyone seriously since, and I don’t have a girlfriend now.”
“You’re divorced? And a…a dad? But you’re so young.” He’d flipped everything I thought I knew on its head. I grabbed my wine and glugged it. The gears in my brain were grinding.
His expression turned serious. “Zara and I started dating our junior year in college. She was nothing like the type of woman my parents wanted me to date. She didn’t come from a wealthy family.
She wasn’t pre-law or pre-med or even in the business school.
She’s artistic, smart, and determined, and she was studying to be an industrial designer.
I was fascinated by the world she showed me, and I’ll admit, enough of a shit to want to rebel against my parents’ advice.
They tried to talk me out of our engagement, but I thought she was the one.
” He lined up the two forks on the left of his plate.
“Everything seemed to be going well,” he continued, “and a few years later, we decided to start our family. We had Caitlyn.” He rubbed his palm over his chin.
“And…and it flipped a switch for me. I’d always been a hard worker, but suddenly I was providing for my family, you know?
” At last, he met my gaze, and I nodded.
That sounded familiar. “With my new focus and dedication, my career took off. But things at home crumbled. According to her, I spent too much time at work and too little time at home. A couple years later, she realized being married to me wasn’t the life she wanted. ”
I rubbed at the tightness in my chest. “My family and friends hate my job too. I’m unreliable.
” I waved at the restaurant, at the lantanas growing in planters outside the screened window.
“I’m late for dinner. I cancel plans. I work all the time.
I haven’t dated anyone for more than a few weeks because everyone I meet is the same way.
They think they want someone like themselves, but they’re really looking for someone who’s home with dinner on the table when they get there. It’s exhausting.”
He winced. “Yeah, that’s how I treated Zara.”
“I’m sorry about your divorce,” I said. “That had to be hard. I assume you share custody?”
“I get Caitlyn every other weekend, and we alternate holidays. I was supposed to have her for Thanksgiving.”
A chill washed through me. “Shit, if I’d known that, I’d have insisted that you go home. Why’d you stay?”
“You needed me more than she did.”
“Me? I don’t need you.”
He leaned forward and covered my hand with his. His eyes were bottomless in the dim light. “Don’t you?”
“No.” It didn’t come out as forcefully as I’d intended, and goose bumps rose on my forearms. I slid my hand from under his and tucked both my hands into my lap.
He saw through my lie, but he didn’t argue.
Instead, he changed the subject, and we talked about some ideas he had for leveraging the Costa Rican office to take on some tasks for the finance department.
We ate our meal, we finished the bottle of wine, and for the first time ever, we didn’t argue. It was…pleasant. Unexpected.
Cole Campion was a dad. And single. Maybe a better person than I’d given him credit for being. He was more like me than I cared to admit. Plus, he was interested in me. He’d called us inevitable.
I knew better. We were an inevitable disaster.
No matter the attraction I felt, rivals didn’t become lovers. If they did, they ended up as a nightmare Stan and his HR team would have to unravel, with paperwork and pink slips.
My brain knew this, but my libido didn’t care. It wanted one thing: Cole.
After dinner, as he walked me to my room, I was careful not to let our arms brush. I ignored the flutters in my belly when he looked at me with those deep-blue eyes. We were all wrong for each other, and I had to ignore—no, reject—the sexual tension that simmered between us.
So after I unlocked my door, as Cole leaned against the doorframe, clearly waiting for me to invite him inside, I crossed my arms. “Inevitable, huh?”
I shut the door on his smirking face.