Chapter Nine
Isley
You will not misbehave. You will not misbehave. You won’t.
Isley had taken to reciting this on a regular basis since returning from the trip to Paris.
Laken’s fathers’ retirement basically threw everyone for a loop.
Only it was much worse for Isley—it had to be with how he was suffering—when he had not seen love coming to bite his ass and take a huge chunk.
It turned Isley’s life upside down, and inside out for good measure.
He wasn’t sure if he could continue with the way things were anymore because who could have predicted that he’d end up rejected by the one person he had to spend most of his time with.
He cursed under his breath at his misfortune and how if he had kept control, things would not have turned disastrous post the visit to Darling Ranch, where his animal had given away a vital piece of Isley.
That’s right, cast the blame at me. You had feelings long before we went to the ranch.
Whoever came up with the idea—he suspected Silas because of what was revealed at the ranch between him and Ziggy—was to blame. His animal could go leap off a damn building because he wasn’t taking responsibility, not fully, for the mess of his life.
Laken, since Paris, had finally pushed Isley over the edge of his patience. Pushed. Knocked. Trampled into it. He had a huge well of it, and now the river of his patience was drier than any desert in the heat of summer.
That man!
Laken, god the guy was enough to drive a saint nuts. Isley prided himself on having never lost his temper or his cool demeanor, not once in a working environment.
Not once.
Not a teenie tiny bit!
Technically, they weren’t in the workplace when it had first happened in Paris. Then he was more miffed than furious. Louis would have tired anyone’s patience with his handsy nature, therefore it was understandable from anyone’s point of view to do what he did.
Since their return from Paris, Laken had created distance between them. Been dismissive. He wasn’t the one rejected, confusing Isley as to what Laken’s issue was with him. It should be him acting like an asshole, not the other way around.
He sighed dejectedly, trudging down the corridor to Laken’s office, doing his best not to think about all the ways he wanted to make Laken beg. Scent marking him wasn’t enough to repel Louis, though technically it wasn’t him but his animal side that had carried that out.
It was fun.
It wasn’t fun. It was naughty and I’m not like that, Isley argued back with his sugar glider side, for what felt like the hundredth time.
He didn’t know what possessed him to shift and latch onto the back of Laken’s jacket as he’d left the hotel in Paris.
He’d seen Louis waiting in the lobby when he’d returned, dejected about an evening alone.
He had quickly found a restroom and shifted, leaving his clothes in the locked cubicle, to follow them.
If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d lost his own goddamn mind taking a chance to glide right into Laken’s hand in the full restaurant with the potential of being caught and killed by an unsuspecting member of staff thinking he was a rodent.
This shit happened. When Louis had snuggled up against Laken in the booth—and in principle Laken was a free agent, which, of course he was—he’d lost it.
Because all those heated moments when they had these weird stare offs that resulted in the room smelling of sex were giving Isley mixed messages.
This was why he’d taken matters into his own hands, or more to the point, Laken’s.
Could he therefore be blamed for what transpired after?
No. He’d gate crashed the meal unbeknownst to Louis, refused to let go for an hour to teach Laken a lesson about messing with him, then promptly got a blatant rejection—nude.
He should be mortified by his clingy behavior. He was. Fiddlesticks, he wanted to be, even though his feelings were hurt post clingy behavior.
God it was all so confusing.
You aren’t kidding anyone but yourself. The man is a dream, and he’s hiding from what he wants, us.
He’s a haughty, uptight, tyrant. Isley had come to that conclusion since their return.
Then why are you the one having to tell yourself to behave when you want more. Are you considering getting me to scent mark him again? Answer me that?
Isley blushed furiously, the denial right there on the tip of his tongue.
Don’t even try that with me. I can read your thoughts, matey.
He sniffed indignantly and ignored his other half, mentally going through the list of meetings he’d set up for today. It was better than the alternative.
He clutched his iPad a little tighter. He had all the planning notes prepared before leaving his office.
He was extra meticulous because Laken demanded it from him.
Isley didn’t mind that so much. He liked order in his workplace because he was more of a scatter-brain when at home.
He was used to hard work and long hours, loving his job, he truly did… until recently.
The next sigh came out more tormented than he liked.
He didn’t get why Laken was so dead set against starting something with him.
He was nice. People liked him. No one had ever actively gone out of their way to pretend he didn’t exist before.
And okay, maybe Isley had tripped and hit Laken in the balls with his face just last week, and he lingered for a second too long to check if things were…
hard. It could happen to anyone, right? The office was small enough to find trip hazards anywhere.
He’d not done it on purpose. His foot caught on the silly leg of a chair.
Laken had been so critical when Isley had used his butt to stop falling to his knees.
He had apologized profusely hadn’t he? Nothing had made a difference to the grumpy scowl.
It seemed Laken now thought him a clumsy fool and went out of his way to evade Isley. So when he’d accidentally—on purpose—tripped and spilled coffee into Laken’s lap for being rude to him, who could blame him? He’d offered to wipe up the mess. What more could a person want?
Another sigh while coming to a stop outside Laken’s office door an hour before he was officially supposed to start.
Laken always arrived early, and Isley had gotten into the habit of being here to avoid playing catch up.
If he thought Laken had worked hard before, now he never seemed to want to leave the office.
Isley wasn’t competitive, but if Laken thought he could out do him he was in for a shock. He didn’t have a life outside of work, so what difference did it make spending all his waking hours with Laken.
I really don’t want to be anywhere else, why can’t he see that?
He swallowed a groan of distress, took a fortifying breath outside the door, and knocked once. Not waiting for a reply, which could see him waiting a long time when Laken often got lost in his work, he walked straight in.
Coming to an abrupt stop, Isley glanced wide eyed at the empty chair behind Laken’s desk.
The office was much like Laken, no fuss, classic furniture and all clean lines.
No personal knickknacks anywhere. The place gave little clue as to who the alpha was.
It had taken weeks—months—to glean any information about the stoic man fond of issuing orders without so much as one glance in Isley’s direction.
It was maddening to be ignored so blatantly after recent events.
His nose twitched at the lingering scent of Laken’s cologne, which wasn’t strong, and there in the corner of the room sat the coffee machine. The coffee pot was empty.
Isley’s lips twitched as he took a seat opposite Laken’s desk and opened his iPad and started working through the list of emails that required his attention. He didn’t think to put the coffee on because he never made it the way Laken liked.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there when Kodi appeared through the door like a whirlwind.
“Where is he?” he asked, coming to an abrupt stop when he noticed the empty desk.
Why doesn’t he know where Laken was?
“He’s… he’s…” Heck, what was he supposed to say?
“Don’t bother,” said Kodi, throwing up his arms. “I don’t have time to fuck about, I’ll find him later.”
He stomped out and Isley rolled his eyes at Kodi’s back as he got up to close the office door and return to what he was doing, trying hard not to jump to any conclusions as to why Kodi didn’t know where Laken was when they lived in the same house.
Sometime later, there was a knock at Laken’s door, which brought his attention back to the time.
Rising from his seat, he placed down his iPad and went to open the door when it became clear that whoever had knocked had no intention of entering without being asked.
Clearly it wasn’t one of Laken’s seven brothers, who wouldn’t wait for an invitation. Isley grew uneasy at this change.
He smiled at the handsome man dressed in a smart, dove grey suit that matched his eyes. Not as tall as Laken, he matched him for broadness across his chest. He looked familiar, but Isley couldn’t place him with his mind racing over all the possibilities for Laken’s lack of absence.
“Hello, can I help you?” He glanced at the empty secretary’s desk, where Charlotte usually sat, and frowned.
Where is everyone?
“I have a meeting with Mr. Laken Starling.” The man shifted his attention to Charlotte’s desk, then back at Isley, offering a twinkling eyed smile. “It’s just his secretary isn’t at their desk and as it was five minutes past our meeting time, I thought it best to knock.”
He held out his hand. It was large and Isley’s was engulfed in it a second later, receiving a firm handshake. “David Sinclair, buyer for Haymarket. Call me David.”
Fiddlesticks. The man worked for one of the biggest companies that stocked Starling fashions. Where the heck was Laken?
Isley didn’t reveal his panic and guided David into the office. “Can I get you a coffee? Tea? Soft drink?”
Say yes. Say yes.
“A black coffee would be great.”
“Give me a minute.” Isley barely waited the second it took to receive a nod before darting out of the office and closing the door behind him, hustling to Charlotte’s desk and ringing Laken’s mobile. It went directly to voice message, prompting Isley to leave one.
“Laken, where are you?” he hissed in exasperation. “David Sinclair is here for a meeting. I’ll go through the file with him until you get here, but please ring my mobile to let me know you’re on your way so I can tell him how long you’re gonna be.”
Next, he went to get a coffee from the PA’s coffee lounge on the next floor because he really didn’t want to go back in and start up the machine in Laken’s office like a dork and give the game away that there was a problem.
Returning with the coffee minutes later, the silent phone in his slacks pocket taunted him. He put on his sunniest smile as he handed David his drink. “It looks like Laken has been delayed, but I can go through the information we have on your current order status.”
A wrinkle appeared between David’s brows, but aside from that his expression was unreadable. “That’s fine, I hope there isn’t a problem?”
Sweating bullets, Isley projected as much calm as he could muster around the ball of anxiety forming in his gut and took his seat after picking up his iPad.
“No problem, I have everything you need.” He took a deep breath and clicked into the file section, pulling up Hayward’s order information.
He plastered on a confident smile he wasn’t feeling and met David’s gaze directly.
“Where do you want to start? I have all the store inventory to be shipped, if you want to begin with that?”