Chapter 14 #2
My office. It’s my office now, not my dad’s. Still, it’ll always be the place where I did a remarkably bad job of firing Cleet and Ross. I’ve been avoiding it, but maybe it’s time to reclaim it.
“Yeah,” I say distantly.
“So come on.”
Five minutes later, we’re sitting in the office in front of the desktop—me in the desk chair, because Liam insisted, and him in a laughably small aluminum visitor’s chair with a black plastic seat that groans every time he moves.
I glance at him as I log on to the computer. “Are you ready to tell me what we’re doing in here? The suspense is driving me nuts.”
“Good. Let’s keep it rolling a little while longer. Turn your back while I get this set up.”
I don’t like turning my back. Not on most people. Not after what I’ve been through, but I don’t feel anything but bubbling anticipation when I swivel my chair around. Liam slides his seat forward with a small scrape of metal against the linoleum flooring.
I hear the muted click-clack of keys, followed several moments later by what sounds like a church choir singing.
“You’ve taken my need for inspiration very literally,” I say as I rotate the chair back around. I grin at him when I see the opening credits for a movie on my computer screen. “We’re really watching Rocky?”
“Damn straight. You need a break, Briar. Let’s take a break.” He runs a hand across his stubbled jaw. “These movies are cliché at this point, but they meant something in the beginning. That was a lesson to me. Not everything that’s popular is bad.”
I stare at him in the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights overhead, at a loss for words.
“This means a lot to me,” I say, the truth of it expanding inside of my chest like a new universe. No man has ever made me feel supported like this. Jonah’s support had all been delivered in brittle promises, never in actions. “It’s hard to put it into words.”
He lifts a finger to his lips. “So you’d better not try. C’mon, Briar, we don’t want to miss this part.”
It’s obvious he doesn’t like to take compliments.
“Yeah, wouldn’t want to miss all the singing,” I say in a soft voice, as if we’re in a movie theater and not huddled together in the office.
It truly doesn’t look like my space in any way.
I haven’t replaced the stern I’m the boss chair or put up any art prints on the walls.
Part of me is afraid to, as if doing so will make my failure a certainty rather than just a possibility. “I know that’s what Rocky’s known for.”
He brushes his knuckles softly against my arm. “Glad you see things my way.”
His slightly rough skin sends a shiver through me, and I find myself wondering what it would feel like for him to touch me other places.
Most of the men I’ve dated have been soft, suited, and civilized, like Jonah.
Intimacy would be different with Liam, but I’ll never experience it—a thought that makes my skin feel too tight.
“You got hurt,” I say abruptly, lifting my fingers to the bruise on his cheek, skating lightly over the skin. “You were practicing?”
He captures my hand in his and holds on for a second—heat pouring between us—before lowering his arm.
“I was,” he says, his voice a little rough. “I’m training for a local tournament at the end of January.”
“I don’t like the thought of someone hitting you.”
He gives me a wicked grin that I feel in all the places I’ve declared closed for business.
“Who says I’ll be the one who gets hit?” he asks, then nods to the screen. “Focus, Princess. There will be a quiz.”
We watch the movie side by side in our chairs. It feels companionable, but there’s something else hazing the air between us, the tension that’s been there since Sunday night. It ebbs and flows, but it doesn’t go away.
He works for you.
He’s Hannah’s brother, and she said to stay away.
He’s never serious about women.
He’ll break your heart, again.
But the pulsing awareness I have of him doesn’t care about any of that. All it cares about is the strong arm that touches mine when he laughs and the sidelong looks he gives me at his favorite parts of the movie.
We’ve watched it for maybe forty minutes before I pause it and gesture to the small green, leather-upholstered loveseat positioned next to the office door. Sometimes Dad had meetings with multiple people, and he’d sit on the couch and position his visitors across from him on the tiny chairs.
“You must be uncomfortable in that chair,” I say. “We could turn the screen around and sit there.”
He glances at the couch and then at me. “We could.”
“Should we?” I ask, feeling awash in self-consciousness.
It’s his stare. It’s soaking into my skin and spreading.
“We shouldn’t, but I think we’re going to anyway. This chair feels like it was constructed to torture people.”
“It probably was.” I reposition the monitor before pressing play again. “My dad didn’t like to keep other people comfortable in meetings. He thought it gave him the upper hand.”
He huffs, “Can’t wait to meet him. I’ve heard such good things.”
“You may like him,” I say with a shrug as we head over to the couch. Our sides brush together as we move, but neither of us make any real effort to put distance between us. “A lot of people do.”
“I doubt it,” he says as he lowers onto the couch. “He hasn’t been very nice to you, and I’m inclined to take that personally.”
I flick off the overhead lights and sit next to him, feeling my body dip toward him. I know I should edge away, but I let my thigh and arm press against his as we tune into the movie.
Fifteen minutes later, he winds his arm around me and starts playing with my hair. I don’t say anything as I sink further into him, every atom in my body focused on the places where we’re pressed together. He doesn’t acknowledge it either.
It’s like we’ve silently agreed that if we avoid commenting on what’s happening it won’t be a big deal. We’re just two colleagues sitting together, watching a movie as a much-needed break.
But when Rocky tells Adrian he can’t win the fight—he just wants to go the distance—I shift to look at Liam. Our legs are still touching, and his face is closer than I’d realized, angled down toward me.
“You don’t think I can win?” I ask in a small voice.
“I do,” he insists. “But I don’t think it’s the winning that matters, Briar. Not with this. It’s about going all in, even if you don’t think you’ve got a shot.”
“Is that how you fight?”
His smile is approving again, and I find myself tracing it with my finger, as if touch is a direct conduit to memory.
He watches me with a feral look in his eyes. “I thought we said no touching the boss,” he says, his voice low and raspy. “I believe in following the rules.”
“You’re not my boss, and you’re the one who wrote it.”
“Good thing. Say…do you think a kiss qualifies as a touch?” he asks, reaching back to cup my head through my hair.
He’s close enough for me to see the glints of gold and red in his short beard and the constellations of amber in his eyes. The bluish bruise above his right cheekbone.
My every nerve ending is drunk on him, but that doesn’t stop me from remembering the way Hannah begged me to never, ever date Liam. I’m positive he has no interest in dating me, but I’m also sure she wouldn’t want me to make out with him at work.
I edge away on the couch. “We can’t do this.”
“No,” he says, wrapping his fingers around my wrist. “I think what you mean is that we shouldn’t do this.”
“We shouldn’t,” I repeat, my voice shaky. “You’re right about that.”
His focus is totally mine, as if I’m the only woman on Earth. The only one who matters.
“But I really want to,” he admits gruffly. “Do you want me to kiss you, Briar Sterling? I’ll know if you’re lying. You’re a terrible liar.”
“You’re a bully.” But I stay put, his fingers still surrounding my wrist, caressing me with tiny movements.
“Some people have said so, but I think you know better.”
I do. He’s gruff and says what he pleases, but he’s kind too. He was kind to Otis. He was kind to me that first night, bringing me to the boxing gym because he could tell what I needed even when I couldn’t.
“We can’t do this,” I say again, more emphatically, for both of us. Rocky’s fighting Apollo Creed now, and it’s not going well for him. I gesture at the screen in desperation. “He’s losing.”
“Exactly,” he says, tugging me a little closer. I slide toward him, needing the solid assurance of him. “When the chips are down, that’s when you need to feel the most alive.”
He reaches up to cup my chin, cradling it as he peers into my eyes. To my surprise, I’m the one who pushes up and kisses him.