Chapter Six
ISOBEL
Bar Harbor, ME
When we crossed the state line into Maine, we must have crossed into an alternate universe. One where the guy I wanted to vote ‘most likely to be muzzled’ in the office had somehow turned into a charming reincarnation of himself that I had a hard time keeping my thoughts clean around.
At lunch, I’d thought naughty things about him. Bad, dirty, filthy things that I should never be thinking about Adrian, yet somehow, I couldn’t stop. When he made playful comments about my ass, I found myself blushing instead of wanting to cram a red pen into his eye socket. When he offered to wheel my suitcase up to my room, I wanted to drag him inside to see what he kept under all those suits.
I’d seen glimpses here and there in the gym on the first floor of our office building, but never up close, and I usually bolted in the other direction if I saw him because I detested him.
I did.
I detested him completely.
But I also might be developing a bit of a crush on this fictionalized version of him.
One of my authors, Chase, had written his kind of hero dozens of times, the grumpy ass-wipe who terrorized everyone in his office but secretly had a heart of gold or simped hard for the sunshiny heroine. I was not a sunshine heroine. I was a tired divorcee almost past her prime, who never dated and delved into the psyche of fictional men all day.
As we headed back toward the small oceanside resort, I flexed my toes inside my shoes, knowing I’d need to soak them in warm water once we returned to our room. I mean rooms —separate rooms, plural—because I was not staying with Adrian in the same room. This wasn’t some forced proximity trope that would force the two main characters to realize their true feelings for each other.
The only true feeling I was having toward Adrian right now was suspicion. Where was this funny, playful, considerate man while his alter ego was off terrorizing his co-workers with elitist comments about his authors and nasty comments that were borderline sexual harassment? I didn’t know this Adrian. In the five years since I’d had the misfortune to work in the same office as him, I’d never once seen him act like this.
And it was fucking with my head. Big time.
“Are you not going to talk to me anymore? Your toes are frozen, not your tongue,” Adrian teased from behind me. I could see him walking in my peripheral vision, and I may have caught him stumbling over a tree root because he’d been staring at my ass.
Do not think about his tongue. Or what it’d feel like in your mouth, or licking your…
God, it had been far too long since I’d had a man do anything remotely sexual to me, and now I was projecting years of pent-up tension on Adrian. That’s what it was. I couldn’t possibly like him. No. Just no.
He was Dickhead .
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it was better to say nothing than make small talk with someone who is just flirting with you to entertain themselves?”
Adrian reached forward to grab my elbow, stopping me in my tracks as a shock ran through my arm at the contact.
“That’s what you think?” he asked, his voice low and slightly menacing .
“What other reason do you have for acting like you have for the past six and a half hours? I don’t know who this guy is, but it sure isn’t you.”
“God,” he scoffed as he released me and scrubbed his hand over his face, thrusting his fingers into the hair I’d recently had my fingers in. “Nice to know how you really feel about me, Isobel. I thought we’d finally come to some sort of cease-fire, but all the flirting from you today must have been fake too. I guess that’s what I get for finally letting my guard down around you. Couldn’t possibly be that I’m attracted to the stunning woman who gives as good as she gets. Nope, I just got something else. A square kick to the nuts.”
My eyes widened when he strode toward me, his shoulder brushing mine as he squeezed around me and took off down the trail. His long legs ate up the path, my shorter ones breaking into a jog behind him, trying to keep up. I knew he’d been different today, but I still had difficulty believing that this was his real personality. I’d never seen it before. Excuse me for being a little blindsided by this sudden change in demeanor.
“Wait,” I huffed, trying to keep up with him.
“Don’t bother,” he shot back when he hit the black asphalt in the parking lot and didn’t turn around. “I guess I’ll see you around, but don’t worry, I won’t bother trying to talk to you. Wouldn’t want to upset princess by trying to get to know her or anything.”
“Shit,” I muttered, slowing to a walk while I watched him angrily stride through the hotel’s front doors, leaving me behind.
Less than five minutes ago, I’d been convinced he would kiss me, but maybe I should have known better. Perhaps I was right; he was fucking with me to see if I would embarrass myself and flirt back. But his anger didn’t seem to be at being caught. I’d hurt his feelings for real.
Whatever it was, I was staying away from him for the next few days, not that he seemed too eager for my company.
Adrian made a point to sit on the other side of the room at dinner last night, and it seemed that I was still getting the cold shoulder this morning, too, as he joined a group of men I recognized as other suspense editors from various small presses around New England.
He hadn’t made eye contact with me once, not even when I passed him in the lobby. It seemed I’d hurt him when I’d called him out on the trail. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on with him, but I wasn’t about to play his games. Five years of misbehavior and making me feel like I was inferior to him wasn’t going to disappear in one afternoon.
Going through the motions, I plated up breakfast, taking a seat at a small table for two in the corner. Hoping to avoid having to interact with anyone, I strategically placed my messenger bag opposite me across the table, effectively signaling I didn’t want to be disturbed.
Biting into the chocolate croissant I’d chosen to go with over my bland breakfast of oatmeal and yogurt, I frowned as I remembered how the ones Adrian had shared with me melted in my mouth. The warm hazelnut filling was vastly superior to the small pieces of baker’s chocolate that my teeth struggled to chew through in the middle of this one. Setting it aside, I scanned the room, my eyes connecting with Adrian’s. I kept my expression neutral as I maintained his gaze, trying to show him that his brush-off didn’t affect me. I was a big girl, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t been conditioned to deal with his dickish behavior. It was par for the course at this point.
He looked away first as he laughed loudly, his mouth curving into a genuine smile as he returned to the conversation at his table full of the typical boys’ club he gravitated toward .
I didn’t know what I was expecting. Disappointment shouldn’t be something new when it came to his reactions to me, but I found myself wishing that the man the day before was real. The sparks of attraction between us couldn’t have been all fabricated. He’d felt it too.
Or was I just that big of a fool for trying to see the redeemable qualities in another loveable asshole? You’d have thought I’d learned my lesson with Grant.
The cocky, charming asshole was still an asshole when it came down to it, and one of those had already crushed me.
Keeping my head down, I vowed to avoid him at all costs, which almost worked.