Chapter Five
Verity had been concerned that she overplayed her hand in Alex’s office the other day, but he had acted like he wasn’t offended by her during all of their following interactions.
She hated to admit that he had hurt her feelings. She didn’t want to unpack any of that. She didn’t want to examine it too closely. He was her boss. Her boss that she had agreed to enter into a sham marriage with, so there was a lot there.
And when he had looked at her with those dark, fathomless eyes and said that he had chosen her simply because she was the first person he had interviewed? It had been like a dagger to the heart.
So had what he’d said about his experience in foster care.
No one had kept him for longer than six months? For his entire life?
She was forced to imagine him as a little pinball, being bounced around the system with nowhere to rest. And then she supposed at eighteen he had been out on his own without a support system.
There was no way that wouldn’t have shaped who he was.
It made her understand him to an extent.
And made her worry a little bit that he was right.
That he wasn’t ever going to be able to have human connection the way that other people did.
She had read about things like that. That children needed to form bonds with caregivers before the age of two or they were damaged irreparably.
That just didn’t seem fair, though. He hadn’t had control over any of that.
It mitigated some of the anger she felt toward him. But just some of it.
It was weird, not having the specter of her Stavros crush standing between her and Alex. She didn’t want to ponder why that was different either.
Stavros.
She scrunched her face. She was supposed to be meeting Alex in twenty minutes to go to a jewelry store, and it just occurred to her that she had never followed up with Stavros the previous week. She did feel like she owed him an explanation. But now she was going to have to come up with a lie.
She let out a heavy breath, and slipped down the hallway, finding his office door slightly ajar. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the door, and pushed it open slowly. “Hi,” she said.
He looked up from his desk, and for some reason, she just didn’t get the same thrill when his eyes met hers. Eyes that were black like a void. She probably should have found a new therapist when she moved to Greece. It was a little bit too late to worry about that, she supposed.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I feel like I owe you an apology.
There was obviously a bit of a misunderstanding between us.
I haven’t been in Greece all that long..
. You know, comparatively. And I really enjoy talking to you.
And I thought that maybe we could be friends.
But I realize that the way that I asked you to spend time outside of work might have been misinterpreted, and it had some very strange timing. ”
He frowned. “I see.”
“I’m sorry. I imagine women generally don’t just want to be friends with you.”
He laughed, and leaned back in his chair. “That makes me sound like a jerk,” he said.
“Well. No. It doesn’t. It’s just...” She felt like a jerk.
Because she was the one who was lying to the man.
Gaslighting him, really. But she was trying to do it in a nice way.
“I can see in hindsight how it looked. And of course Alex was very protective of the nature of our relationship because he is my boss, and he actually takes all the appropriateness of all that very seriously.”
“Does he? Because it seems to me like you were in a pretty easy position for him to take advantage of you, speaking of the fact that you are only newly in this country and you do work for him. Plus, you’re quite a bit younger than he is.”
“I do have agency,” she said, using the exact same line of attack against Stavros as she had on Alex.
“I didn’t mean to say you didn’t. Only that there is definitely an appearance of impropriety,” Stavros said.
“Well, there wasn’t. But that is why we were so careful.
We both understand how it looks. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify, because I feel like I looked really flaky, and maybe even not very nice, and I didn’t want to hurt your feelings and.
..” Suddenly, Stavros was looking behind her, and he went a shade or two paler.
She turned, and there he was. Dark eyes like a void. Radiating dark flame.
“Verity. We were meant to meet.”
Verity snatched her phone out of her bag, and looked at the time on the screen. “Not for ten more minutes.”
“I expect to be able to find you in your office.”
“I don’t live in my office, Alex.”
A muscle in his jaw jumped, and she could see that he was legitimately angry. She needed to get this out of Stavros’s office before something blew up. She didn’t know what, and she didn’t know why, but she knew that something was in danger of exploding.
“Thank you,” she said to Stavros. Which was maybe the wrong thing to say?
But she was in a hurry. “I’ll...see you later.
” Then when she reached out and grabbed hold of Alex’s arm without thinking, and began to drag him away from the room, she was completely engulfed by him.
His hardness, his heat, the overwhelming sensation of what it was to touch him.
She lost the ability to think, the ability to speak. He smelled like Cyprus. Like the sea. She wanted to lean in and smell him, sniff his jacket, right where it fell against his bicep. She wanted to move her hand up from where she gripped him at the crook of his elbow and touch that bicep.
Oh dear. She was drowning. In her embarrassment at having all of this happen in front of Stavros, in her anger at Alex for being... Alex, and in this new hell of knowing that touching him turned her into a creature made entirely of sensation and need.
And this is why not having the illusion of Stavros is a problem...
She wanted to strangle that sage inner voice.
“What was that?” she asked, letting go of his arm and turning toward him as soon as they were out of view of Stavros’s office.
“Not here,” he said.
He took hold of her again, and practically frog-marched her to the elevator, and as soon as they were closed inside, he released his hold on her. “I don’t need you causing gossip by speaking to another man that you formerly had feelings for.”
“That I formerly had feelings for? How do you know I don’t currently have feelings for him? This is not real,” she said, gesturing wildly between them.
“I didn’t mean in reality,” he said. “I mean it was terribly obvious to anyone who looked at you that you had a crush on him.”
“Oh, I know. Which is why I was in there trying to come up with a different story for him, because he is very confused as to why I asked him on a date, only to have a headline about our engagement come out that very same day.”
“Right,” said Alex, clearly having only just thought of this for the first time. Because of course that would mean thinking outside of himself more than he was accustomed to doing.
“Yes, right. He is in fact the reason I knew that we were engaged, because you didn’t tell me. So I had to explain...all of that, or we were going to have a loose end. And then you came in there like...like that, which only made things look weird.”
“Aren’t men often jealous when their fiancées speak to other men?”
“Insecure men, maybe.”
He said nothing, and a muscle jumped in his jaw.
He was actually upset. He was unhappy that she had been in there talking to Stavros.
He couldn’t be jealous, it was... He was possessive.
In the way he might be of a paperweight that he really liked.
Because they weren’t friends, but there was a strange sort of.
..something. He tried to deny it, he tried to play it off, but it was there.
He might not understand connections between people, but she did.
She was very sensitive to them, and she maybe understood them a little bit better than she even wanted to.
Because the kind of life she’d had growing up had forced her to be so very aware of the inner workings of people around her at all times.
It wasn’t her that was wrong about the two of them. It was definitely him. But she did understand now that it wasn’t...it wasn’t quite a typical sort of connection. Because he didn’t understand those sorts of things.
The elevator arrived at its destination, and they walked out the doors in unison. Then they stood there, side by side in the lobby of the building. “Hold my hand,” he said, looking at her, his dark eyes presenting something like a challenge.
She took a deep breath, and curled her fingers around his.
She was shocked by how rough his hands were.
He was a man with a desk job; she didn’t expect to find calluses there.
His hand was so big. It overtook hers entirely.
Just as he would if he were to...take her into his arms, press her against the wall. ..
She needed to stop thinking like this.
He was beautiful, and she had known that from the first day she had met him, but it had been easy to put him in his own category.
She had made a lot of decisions about what she wanted her life to look like when she had left home.
And one of the first decisions she made was regarding romantic relationships.
She didn’t want someone volatile. She had felt like it was important to make those decisions before she had ever jumped into the dating pool because she knew that romance could make people silly.
Alex had not been a viable candidate for romance of any kind, not just because of his age, or because he was her boss, but because he exhibited the kinds of characteristics she wanted to stay away from.
Friendship was fine. Even though they weren’t friends. Her being his employee was fine, because she actually was so good at managing intensity that it was second nature to deal with him. But...