Not on the Same Page (Strong Enough #2)

Prologue

TRINA

May

Four beats are all it takes for my entire world to flip upside down.

One—to register the shrill sound of a phone ringing as I squint my eyes against the early-morning light streaming through curtains I forgot were open.

Two—to realize the delicious, warm weight over my torso isn’t my blanket at all, but an arm. Which means I broke rule number one: Never, ever spend the night at his place.

Three—to feel the arm lift and hear a low, “Shit.” A throat clearing. “Hello? Yes, sir. Of course. I can be there in…an hour. No, I’ll call Trina. Yes, I’m sure. See you soon.”

Four—to roll over and see the broad expanse of Casey’s bare chest just as he hangs up and tosses his phone on the comforter. He rolls his head to meet my gaze, his expression vaguely apologetic as he says, “That was Anastasios. Someone outed Scarlett, and he needs us both there for a meeting.”

“Someone…what?” There are so many things wrong right now that I find myself wondering if that third martini last night knocked me off the right timeline and onto this one, where there are more problems than I’m prepared to deal with.

Especially the morning after three martinis.

Not to mention I’m having trouble processing the first problem—that it’s morning and I’m in Casey’s condo despite agreeing several times this was never going to happen.

Did I want it to happen, though? There must be some reason why I’m still here. I search my memory of last night, coming up with only a few hazy pieces.

“Stay,” Casey whispers in my ear.

I’m alcohol-tipsy and lust-drunk enough to snuggle myself closer into his chest as his arm tightens around my shoulders.

I breathe in deeply, letting his clean linen scent mingle with the humid smell of sex and sweat.

It lights up my skin, little pinpricks of electricity traveling up and down where our bodies meet.

But instead of admitting what I desperately want, I roll so I’m straddling him. His fingers grip my hips so tightly he might leave a mark. I kind of hope he does.

Lowering my head so our lips are only millimeters apart, I let my hair fall, creating a curtain around us. We’re no longer part of the real world. Only the one of our own making. Only tonight.

“One more time,” I say before claiming his lips with mine. And I’m grateful he lets me believe it’s true.

Oh. Shit.

Casey’s chest rising and falling dramatically brings me back to reality and reminds me I have bigger fish to fry. He puffs his cheeks out with the breath he releases, drawing my attention to the stubble on his dark skin.

Fuck, I really need to concentrate.

“JMP knows about Scarlett’s pen name. I didn’t get much more, but Anastasios sounded less than happy.”

“He’s never happy,” I grumble under my breath.

“Running a publishing house isn’t easy,” Casey muses.

“Even less so when his editors insist on signing the author who walked away from a seven-figure deal and got herself blacklisted from the press that acquired his.” He shoots me a pointed look with his eyebrows raised.

“Not to mention that we were tricked into it in the first place.”

“The deception was mutual. You were the one who passed the manuscript off to her ex-boyfriend without telling me.”

“And it was our job to keep her pen name safe. We had such a small team on this to keep it under wraps. I wonder who—”

“Wait. Why did he call you? You’re not her editor, Ryan is.” I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my aching head as if I could massage away the post-alcohol headache. I’m going to have to deal with the post-sex sleepover later.

“No clue.” Casey interrupts my internalized regret. Good. I don’t need to relive any of those moments, and if Scarlett’s deal is going sideways, I don’t have time to dwell on my own messed up love life. “Unless…” He shakes his head, idly scratching at the tufts of black hair on his chest.

More flashes of memory come back to me—what those hairs felt like against my lips as I licked and nipped my way over his body in the darkness of his condo last night.

My core is suddenly flooded with warmth at the image, which is inconvenient because I’m pretty sure there was something I was supposed to be dealing with…

Dammit. I’m going to need him to put a shirt on. And am I naked under this comforter too? I wiggle around a little and feel the slide of Casey’s very nice sheets against my bare skin. Yep. That’s going to be awkward in a minute when I have to get up.

Casey’s gaze slides to mine. He ticks up an eyebrow, and a corner of his mouth follows as if he can hear my internal monologue and it amuses him.

It would figure that he’s unbothered by any of this.

The man is unflappable. Which—if I’m honest with myself—is actually one of the things I like the most about him.

In the chaos of my life, he’s a stalwart.

It’s probably why I keep coming back to him time and again.

But even though rule number two in our on-again, off-again, no-strings-attached situation we started a few months ago was no feelings, it would be nice to have some idea of what goes on inside his head.

Even more uncomfortable under his scrutiny, I clear my throat. “Unless what?”

His smirk drops right off his face, and he looks up at the ceiling. “Ryan was one of only a handful of people who knew Scarlett’s identity. And she did leave him high and dry five years ago. If he’s still angry—”

“No way,” I cut him off. “You’ve seen his face when he talks about her. That man is in love. Probably was never out of love. He’s not giving her up now that he’s got her back in his life. And besides, this would end his career.”

The bedsheets whisper against Casey’s shoulder as he shrugs.

His gaze flicks to me and quickly back to the ceiling again.

“People do strange things when they feel spurned. Only thing we can do at this point is get to the office and see what’s going on.

” Grunting, he sits up and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.

He leans forward and grabs a pair of boxers from the floor.

The comforter pools around his waist, revealing the curve of his lower body that I’m intimately acquainted with.

“I’ll…um…give you a minute,” he says as he quickly pulls the boxers up over his ass. When I look up, he’s staring down at me, his expression once again unreadable.

Shit. He caught me staring. God, what a mess.

“Okay,” I choke out, barely able to meet his eyes until something occurs to me. “I left my car at the bar last night.” He didn’t drive there at all, so we took a rideshare back to his condo. I was only supposed to stay for a few hours and then make my way back to drive myself home.

I guess the road to Hell really is paved with good intentions.

That earns me a small smile. “That’s way out of the way. We don’t have time to get it. I guess that means we’ll have to drive in together.”

Of course it does. Because exactly what this situation needs is a drive together from Chicago to the Anastasios Press offices in the suburbs. What else could go wrong today?

I shouldn’t have asked because what transpires at the press offices is a complete disaster.

Ryan is forced to clear his name by disclosing his relationship with Scarlett, confirming my earlier suspicions.

And while I’m not surprised and would love to be happy for them, it is crystal clear that Anastasios is just as angry about one of his editors sleeping with one of his authors as he is about Scarlett being outed.

So for the entire meeting, I’m channeling my best agent tricks, trying desperately to cling to some of that elusive work-life balance that keeps slipping through Scarlett’s fingers.

But they seem dead set on doing damage control and finding a way to put her in front of as many people as they can to sell as many books as possible—something she has been very clear she’ll never do again—in order to prove to JMP that signing her wasn’t a mistake.

And all the while, I’m internally panicking. Because you know who else isn’t supposed to be sleeping together? An editor and the agent who actively pitches books to him.

We’ve been careful. And the no-feelings rule helps. We won’t fall for each other. Even if we wanted to—which we do not—we can’t. Rejection is part of the literary world, and we can’t make any of this personal without risking our professional relationship.

But my stomach won’t stop flipping over itself with nerves.

If we’re found out, it could mean being shut out from ever pitching here again.

And I’m sure my job at Northbridge Literary Agency would follow, which cannot happen.

I love my job. It’s the most important, most stable thing in my life.

I don’t know what I would do if it were taken away from me.

I know better. I knew better months ago when a few drinks and a few more casual touches turned into Casey’s strong arms pinning me up against a wall in the alley outside of a bar last winter, my senses overloaded with the cold brick digging into the skin of my back and the warm softness of his lips on me.

This whole thing with Scarlett will likely mean Ryan loses his job here once he hands his edits over to Casey.

And while I’m sure he’ll say something noble about how it’s worth it if he can be with Scarlett, I know that’s the sort of bullshit that will inevitably come back to bite their relationship in the ass.

No one in their right mind can keep themselves from resenting the person who cost them a job they love.

It’s only a matter of time before one of them being out of work blows up in their faces.

But even through the whole mess, I can’t help but glance at Casey across the conference table. And every time I do, he’s looking at me. Studying me. His face unreadable except for one time, when he looks pained. And I can’t help but wonder if he remembers the same thing I do.

“Stay.”

The moment something shifted, and we almost let it. And now, it’s painfully clear we can’t let that happen again.

So as soon as Scarlett leaves the building and Ryan rushes after her like we all knew he would, I pull Casey to the side of the hallway, my heart in my throat and tears burning at the corners of my eyes.

The tears are for Scarlett. Not Casey.

See? No feelings.

But he beats me to the punch. “We can’t keep doing this,” he whispers, his brown eyes wide. “Ryan is in deep shit for almost the same thing, and I can’t get fired. I need this job too much.”

It doesn’t matter that I was just about to say the same thing, it still stings.

“Right. Yeah. Totally.” I swallow hard. “I was going to say that too.”

Casey blinks a few times, his gaze searching mine. I’m not sure what he’s searching for, but he must find it because he nods. “So we’re on the same page, then? No hard feelings?”

No feelings at all, I tell myself. But I shore up all the confidence I can muster and straighten my shoulders. “Yes,” I say. “We are one hundred percent on the same page.”