Chapter 23 Brielle
Brielle
“Knock, knock,” I say, tapping my knuckles on the doorframe of Damian’s office.
His back is to the door, facing the floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the city of Boston. When he spins around, I see that he’s on the phone.
“Sorry,” I mouth. Clutching my laptop to my chest, I take a step back to leave him alone.
“Dad, I have to go. I have someone in my office… Yeah, Dad. No worries there. I’ve got my eye on the prize,” he says, his gaze locked on me.
I swallow down a wave of heat that creeps up my chest. I’m here for a reason, and I don’t need to be distracted by those deep brown eyes making me feel all fluttery.
He puts his phone down without saying goodbye and invites me into his office.
“Come in. To what do I owe this honor?”
“The new draft marketing piece is finished, and I wanted to run it by you,” I tell him, feigning confidence when in reality, my palms are sweating. “I also want to talk to you about something.”
Damian stands from his desk, gesturing for me to take a seat, while he strides to the door, closing us in his office.
“Good. I want to talk to you about something, too.”
“Oh, sure. You can go first,” I tell him.
“Why don’t we handle the work stuff first?” he asks casually.
My heart rate kicks up when Damian doesn’t retake his seat behind the desk. Instead, he leans against the front of it, crossing his ankles and his arms simultaneously.
I wipe my hands on my pants. I really don’t want to tell Damian that I can’t handle the workload, but after I nodded off this morning at our kitchen table, face-first into my laptop, I know that something has to give.
His words halt me before I can broach the topic. “Is your thing… not work related?”
His heated gaze turns to concern as he studies my face. Concealer and foundation can only go so far to cover up the dark circles, and they do nothing to mask the redness in my eyes.
“Doesn’t matter. What’s wrong? Has someone been making you cry? Who?” His voice is hard and menacing, the protector in him rising up.
It sends a thrill through my tired body, waking me up.
“No. No one is making me cry. I’m just tired.
” I pull in a deep breath, steeling my nerves.
I know I’m competent. I know I could develop the marketing skills needed to be really good, given a little more time and training.
I know I can do this, without any special treatment or exceptions. But I can’t do it all at once.
He leans forward and tips my chin up, forcing me to meet his eyes. “Talk to me, Brielle.”
My pulse beats wildly, thrumming through my body, oxygen pulled from the air around us.
“The Vitales,” I basically shout in his face, pulling myself away from his hold and getting to my feet.
Being this close to him isn’t helping my nervous system.
I’m already on edge, and when he looks at me with so much care in his gaze, I’m finding it hard to remember that he isn’t my confidant.
He’s my boss. “I’d like your feedback on the campaign, if you have a minute. ”
“Okay. Let’s see what you’ve done.”
I perch my laptop in my arms, trying to balance it as I navigate to the shared network folder where everything is stored. Damian’s warm hand covers mine, the touch of his fingers making my insides flutter, and he gently tugs the laptop out of my grasp and places it on the desk.
“Right,” I say, offering him a small smile.
I click into the Cardinal West Outdoors folder where all of our other content is, but my file isn’t there.
I click out and into another folder. Maybe I saved it in the wrong spot?
But it isn’t there either. I try a few other folders before panic starts to set in.
My heart beats a crescendo, climbing into my throat with every pulse as I frantically pull my laptop to me, clicking through every file location.
“It’s here somewhere,” I tell him, my eyes wild and fraught. “It has to be. It has to be here somewhere.” Tears start to well, my hands shaking as I go back to the top and try all of the folders again.
“Brielle. Brielle. Take a breath. You’re shaking,” Damian says, concern lacing his voice, his eyes studying me.
“No. It has to be here. I stayed up all night. I haven’t slept. It can’t be gone. It can’t be.”
“What do you mean, you haven’t slept?”
My chin quivers with the emotional overload.
“I couldn’t. There was no time. I needed to get this done by the end of the day.
And I needed to get the accounting batches posted and processed for Rui.
And there were more edits to be done for Trent.
And I was already behind, even though I’ve been working extra late this whole week.
I’m trying so hard to stay on top of everything, and I was.
But now my work is gone, and I’ll have to start over, and there is no way I can redo it all before the end of the day. I can’t, Damian. I can’t do it.”
The tears that were threatening to fall break free, streaming down my face. I’m just too tired and overwhelmed to regulate my emotions, and what should be a normal conversation about work-life balance has become a massive breakdown in my boss’s office.
“Christ, don’t cry. You don’t have to do all of that yourself, Brielle. There is a staff of people here to get things done,” he says. He pulls me to him, wrapping one hand around the back of my head and one arm around my waist and holding me tight.
“I am the staff,” I cry into his shirt.
“Shhh. Take a breath, beautiful,” he whispers. “Breathe.”
I gather my wits, still plastered against his strong chest, the spicy scent of his cologne settling me. Slowly, my heart rate comes down, the tightness in my throat relaxing enough to swallow again.
“There you go. Good girl. I’m going to reassign some things for you.
You don’t have to do all of that. Erica is more than capable enough to help Rui, and if Danielle and Trent need another hand to work on edits, we can pull Brittany in.
I don’t need you working yourself to exhaustion, Brielle. We have teams here for a reason.”
“I need you to treat me like any other employee, Damian. I don’t want any special treatment just because we’ve… you know. It wouldn’t be fair, not to you, not to me, and not to everyone else who works here. Handle me like you would a regular employee.”
“I am. I know everyone thinks I’m the devil around here, but I don’t want any of my employees working through the night, killing themselves to meet my expectations,” he sighs.
“I didn’t think about how much I was adding to your plate when I asked the marketing team to take you on for the Cardinal West campaign.
That’s on me. I should have been more aware, Brielle. I’m sorry.”
“This is how you treat all your employees?” I ask, a spark of humor in my voice now that I’ve calmed down. I wipe the rest of my tears from my eyes.
“Yes, Brielle, this is the same thing I would tell to every one of them,” he says. I tilt my head back to gaze up at him, and his voice lowers. “And no, beautiful, I’ve never wrapped my arms around one of my employees, letting her dry her tears on my shirt. Not until you.”
Somehow, I knew that without ever being told. Over the past few months, I’ve gotten to know Damian well. He isn’t the type to take advantage of his power or status like that. Still, a sense of peace washes over me.
“Thank you. I still don’t know what happened to that design file though.” I pull back from Damian and glare at my computer like it personally deleted the file on purpose.
“Don’t recreate it. I’ll talk to IT about retrieving it.”
“You can do that?” Relief shoots through me at the idea that I don’t need to start from scratch.
“They should be able to access it. Send me the file path and the name of the file, and I’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you, Damian. Seriously.” I collect my laptop from his desk, a lightness in my chest that I haven’t felt in weeks. “What did you want to talk to me about?”
“I’m not sure right now is the best time. We can talk about it later.”
“Why not? If it’s because of my mini meltdown, I’m fine. I’m just so tired. But I already feel better knowing that I’m going to have more help to get everything done.”
“That was a mini meltdown?” he asks, incredulity in his tone.
“Oh, you weren’t kidding when you said you’ve never really been in a relationship, huh?” I chuckle.
“I guess that’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.” I freeze, my eyes going wide with surprise. “Not a relationship, per se. But… a proposition. No. An idea. A thought that I wanted to discuss with you.”
Damian is being uncharacteristically vague. His ramblings make him sound even a little bit nervous.
“What kind of a thought?” I ask.
“Not the kind that you need to worry about right now,” he says, trying to avoid the conversation again. But my curiosity has been piqued, and I’m not ready to let it go that easily.
“Damian, tell me,” I push.
He busies himself behind his desk, sorting papers and clearing old notes. Taking that as a sign that I’ve been dismissed, I turn toward the door.
“What are your plans later?”
His question stops me in my tracks, and I turn around. “Well, I was going to get some work done, but I guess I’m free now.”
He shakes his head. “Not tonight. You need to rest. Tomorrow night? Come by my place.”
Butterflies erupt in my belly. It’s a tempting thought, a repeat of our night together in Colorado. It would be a lie to say I haven’t thought about it… often. But our situation hasn’t changed. Do I really want to get embroiled in another scandal at my workplace?
“Damian, we agreed that we’d leave it behind.” My voice holds a warning, but it sounds weak, even to my ears.
“Is that really what you want?” His impossibly dark eyes seem to hold the universe within them, pulling me in like a black hole.
I want to be smarter than this, stronger than this, but I don’t know if I am.
I thought when we first got back that resisting Damian would get easier, but that hasn’t been the case.
I miss him. I miss our evenings together, sharing dinner, talking.
I miss our one night together, feeling more desired, more satisfied than I ever had.
A part of me knows I overcommitted on work, insisting on doing everything myself, as a means of distraction.
Because if I weren’t wrapped up in other tasks, my mind would wander right back to that hotel room, reliving that night again and again.
“What I do in my personal life is completely separate from my work,” he says. “One doesn’t have anything to do with the other. You just happen to be a part of both.”
“I can’t date my boss,” I tell him. My head is shaking, but it’s as unconvincing as I feel inside. “People will talk, Damian. You know they will.”
Damian can tell I’m wavering. A smirk pulls at his lips. “First of all, I never said anything about dating. I don’t do relationships. This is just two consenting adults. No strings attached. No games. If one of us wants it to end, it ends.”
“And second of all?” I ask.
“Let them.” He shrugs.
The thought of that sends a wave of panic through me. “No.” My voice is firm and unwavering now. That’s the one thing that I can’t compromise on.
“No to coming home with me?”
I can’t believe I’m considering this after everything that happened at my last job. But then I look into his eyes, and I’m pulled into their endless depth with no way to escape.
“No, no one can find out. This has to stay between you and me. Promise me.”
He smiles, his eyes shining like he won a prize.
“Okay. No one needs to know what we do outside of these walls. It’s no one else’s business but ours.
” He takes a step toward me, crowding my space.
His hand lands on my hip, his touch destroying any resistance I had left.
“Is that a yes to coming home with me tomorrow?”
“No,” I say again.
“Brielle,” he growls, his head tipping back in frustration.
“I’m not going home with you, but I’ll meet you there after work.”
“I’ll pick you up at the café.”
“It’s too close to the office. It’s too dangerous,” I tell him, standing my ground. “Either I meet you at your place, or I don’t go. Your choice.”
“Fine,” he agrees. He doesn’t like it, but I don’t care. We need to be careful if we’re doing this. Take every precaution. And driving away from work with the boss would not go unnoticed.
“Good.” I smile, patting his chest. I run my finger down the length of his buttons. When my eyes meet his again, I’m rewarded with a devilishly sexy smirk.
I pull out of his hold and make my way to the door. Just as I open the door, Damian calls from behind me, “Get some rest tonight. You’re going to need it.”
Louisa looks up from her desk, and I fix my face into one of annoyance as I stomp away, anticipation thrumming through me for what’s to come.