Chapter Ten
ADRIAN
Boston
After our little blow-up in Sloane’s office and subsequent confrontation in the stairwell, I thought Isobel would continue to resist working together on this consultation project. I should have known better.
Like the professional she was, within an hour, she had a list of authors in my inbox, and someone from marketing dropped off a box of paperbacks a few hours later that I prepared to send express mail to Evan first thing in the morning.
As much as I wanted to think she was being intentionally difficult, I knew I just brought out that part of her personality. I respected she had no qualms about putting me in my place when I stepped out of line. Which I’d done with my cheap crack about her authors writing porn.
Ma was the same way as Isobel, taking life by the balls and putting herself through nursing school when she was left with two unruly five-year-old twins and a Marine widow’s pension that didn’t cover the bills. I was certain she’d have my balls in a vise grip if she knew how I spoke to people—Isobel especially—and acted in the office. I knew it was toxic as fuck, but I couldn’t seem to break the cycle. I really should know better, but it seemed I’d never kicked the habit I’d adopted twenty years ago. Inside the office, I was Dickhead. Outside the office, I was the well - behaved, devoted to his family, boring older twin, Ad .
The dichotomy of my life had never bothered me before, but I’d never dated a woman I wanted to take seriously. Although, I was far from the dating part with Isobel. She could barely stand to be in the same room with me. That didn’t stop me from getting turned on every time I pissed her off, and the claws came out.
“You can take off, Sam,” I told my copy-editing intern while he sat at the small table in the corner of my office, intently staring at his tablet. “I’m gonna stick around and head to the gym after I get these PDFs ready for Isobel. Is the last draft of Evan’s manuscript on the server?”
He stared at his tablet for a moment as he held a finger up. I hated when people didn’t acknowledge me, but I knew he was trying not to lose his place in the proof he was going through.
“Yeah. I swapped out all the docs with the latest version, and I emailed you a list of the chapters that Sloane thought needed an extra set of eyes.”
“Great, thanks for getting it to this point. Hopefully, whoever Is sends to help can pull him out of this funk. We can’t afford to have another shitty first draft like this coming out of him. I think he’s been jerking off alone in the woods too long.”
Sam shook his head at my borderline inappropriate comment, but he’d long ago stopped trying to make me see the error of my ways. He didn’t know I probably hated the things I spouted off more than he did.
Verbal diarrhea was a bitch. But I probably wasn’t wrong. Evan rarely left the house and never spoke to anyone besides me when he was forced to come into the office, so I doubted he was pulling from fresh source material on these sex scenes. Watching internet porn was hardly accurate research to write a semi-realistic sex scene in a novel.
“Go ahead and take off. I won’t be too far behind you.”
“If you’re sure you’ve got everything handled,” he hedged, but I wasn’t in the mood. I knew he was trying to help, but my frustration from this afternoon didn’t need to be taken out on Sam. The fifty-pound weights on the floor would do the job, or angrily beating off to the memory of Isobel smirking at me with my dick poised at her lips. But I could hold off on that until I returned to my apartment. Alone. Because despite my reputation, it’d been a while.
“I’m good. Go home. Do whatever it is you young people do on a Thursday night.” That made me sound old as fuck, but my bar-hopping weeknights were firmly in my past. I was too old for this shit. And according to my ball-busting brother, not getting any younger. Even though most of his life centered on physical therapy and co-parenting a surly twelve-year-old part-time, his social life was booming compared to mine.
After Sam packed up and left, I scrubbed my hands over my face, running my hands up into my hair and tugging, just for the rush of adrenaline that accompanied the pain. I needed to get my mind off the shitshow of this rough draft and whatever minefield I’d placed myself in the middle of with Isobel.
Running the last month through my head, I still didn’t know where that stolen afternoon at the conference had come from. Isobel hated me, and regardless of my intense attraction to her body, I wasn’t exactly the president of her fan club either.
Despite my inability to keep the inappropriate thoughts in my head, I didn’t like it when people didn’t like me. Ironic, I know, but knowing that Isobel harbored an intense dislike bothered me. I respected the fuck out of her, and she couldn’t care less if I died in a fiery bus accident. She’d probably be the one driving the bus and pouring the gasoline on my decimated body with how much she didn’t like me.
Deciding there was nothing I could do about our current animosity toward each other, I grabbed my gym bag and headed toward the elevators, knowing that if I tired myself out, I’d stop obsessing about the situation.
My personal phone didn’t have any missed messages when I checked them on my walk down the hall, so I breathed a sigh of relief that I wasn’t needed at home to clean up messes or hunt down any wily octogenarians. It seemed I was getting a momentary reprieve.
“You’re here late.” A quiet voice called out from behind the reception desk, startling me a little as I turned the corner.
“I could say the same about you,” I chuckled nervously as I shoved my phone into my pants pocket and looked over at the reception desk. Andrea, the receptionist and executive assistant to the genre editors, had her hair pinned up into a sloppy bun, and a slew of textbooks and notebooks were strewn across her typically pristine desk. “Shouldn’t you have taken off at 5:00 with the rest of the admin staff?”
“Yeah,” she smiled, her eyes nervously flicking between the mess she’d made and my eyes. I know my office may have been meticulously organized, but I wasn’t going to judge her for spreading out while she was clearly working on something. “But my apartment is a shoebox, and the restaurant below is loud, so I didn’t think I’d get much studying done there.”
Tilting my head to the side, I tried to recall what I knew about her. I knew she was only a year or so younger than Sam, with a bachelor’s degree. I’d seen her name on the interview list for the copy-editing intern pool a few times, but she was somehow still at the reception desk. “I thought you already had your degree.”
She blushed, looking down and tucking her short hair behind her ear. “I do. But it didn’t seem to give me much leverage when I was applying for jobs, so I started my graduate degree this semester. Hopefully, once I’m done, I can get something more than a glorified secretary position.”
Hmm. I respected that. I had a master’s degree in Literary Editing and Publishing, as well as several industry certifications and part of a Ph.D. I’d abandoned when Hutch was discharged. She was right. Things were different now than when I’d been hired as a proofer straight out of Boston College. The industry was getting saturated, and it was cutthroat to get a position with more than lateral movement within a house .
Quite a few of the people in my graduate classes did freelance now since the self-publishing industry was growing in popularity, so the industry was changing. I’d just been lucky enough to discover a few authors who had secured my place at Vivid.
“Well, keep at it. Positions open here a few times a year. Just make sure you’re keeping an eye on the listings as they come up. They’ll get snatched up quickly.” I knew there was talk about a few people transferring or retiring soon, so as people moved up to fill those positions, there would be a scramble from the university intern pool to plug in the holes with the entry-level jobs.
“I have been. Sloane sends out a memo to all the executive assistants when things open, so I usually see them before they get posted. No luck yet.”
“Hang in there.” Pulling my phone from my pocket, I glanced at the time, knowing that if I didn’t get moving, I’d only get in a partial workout.
“Sorry,” she apologized, waving me toward the elevators. “I didn’t mean to distract you. Have a good evening Mr. O’Neill.”
“You can call me Adrian,” I laughed, feeling old as fuck when people called me Mr. O’Neill. That was Pops, not me. “I’m not that much of a dick.”
She blushed again, ducking her head as I headed into the elevator lobby. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for the car to arrive, and I was able to get down to the second floor, which housed the fitness center, without a million stops on the way down. The fitness crowd that came down here immediately after work should be clearing out now, but the gym closed at 9:00, so I knew I needed to get changed and get moving, or I’d be crunched for time.
While the heavy bar had a great appeal for tiring myself out, I didn’t have a spotter lined up, so I settled for a moderately heavy weight on the leg press and pushed myself until I couldn’t get out more quality reps. Knowing I would be feeling it tomorrow but had a manuscript to get through a developmental edit on, I went lighter on the arms, the repetitive motion of the chest fly helping to clear my mind.
After a good forty-five minutes of torturing myself through the various chest and arm repetitions, I wiped my sweaty face and guzzled down the rest of my water.
It was times like these I missed the twenty-four-hour gym down the street in my old neighborhood. I used to wake up at five and go for a run before high school and exhaust myself after practices in the afternoon with free weights.
Then I got used to a nicer facility after graduation, spending hours after classes in the university weight room during the off-season. College was lonely for me. Trying desperately to fit in with the other guys on the baseball team or in the library, trying to keep up with my studies. It would have been easy to get caught up in the party lifestyle, but I wasn’t throwing away my only opportunity to make something of myself.
Guilt was a constant companion while I enjoyed the perks of being a scholarship athlete and my brother was off literally fighting for his life in places he couldn’t even tell me about. We tried to keep up an email correspondence, but he’d go silent for weeks at a time and come back sounding more jaded than ever after a particularly long deployment. He didn’t tell me the terrible things he witnessed overseas, and I didn’t ask, but the guilt was always there that I was close to home and building a secure life for myself while he risked his every day.
Weary and sore, I took a shower in the locker room and got dressed in casual clothes, pocketed my car keys, and headed to the parking garage.
A flash of a blonde ponytail caught my attention as I made my way across the closed lobby of the building, my pace slowing as I watched a woman in a pair of tight leggings and a baggy sweatshirt grumble at her phone.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked as I walked closer, my steps faltering when Isobel turned toward me. I wasn’t used to seeing her face bare, but she still stunned me as I took in the flush in her cheeks and the sweat along her hairline—she was beautiful. She’d clearly been trying to work off some aggression in the gym tonight like I had been.
“I’m good. Just trying to get this stupid app downloaded on my work phone, and the network is being slow as fuck. My personal phone died, and I forgot to charge it this afternoon. Kind of hard to request a ride home if I can’t log into the damn app.”
Without hesitation, my mouth opened. “I’ll give you a ride.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’d like that,” she mumbled before she turned away from me and continued stabbing her finger on the screen.
“Is, I’m not trying to be difficult, but at this rate, you’ll be waiting here a while, and I feel guilty leaving a woman stranded after dark if I can help.”
“Oh, so you need to come in and flex your muscles to protect me because I’m a helpless little woman?”
God, why did she have to think the worst of me immediately? I knew the answer to that, but I didn’t like it. “I’m offering to be a nice guy, not because I think you’re helpless. My mother raised me to be a gentleman. Please let me escort you home safely.”
“Could have fooled me, Dickhead .”
Flinching as she hurled that nickname at me like an insult, I took a deep breath and walked closer with my hands held up in supplication. “I know you’re pissed at me, and you should be because my mouth gets me into trouble with you, but I’m not trying to be a dick right now.”
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and I tried to keep my eyes on her face instead of her breasts as she let it out on a shaky exhale. “Fine. I’m sorry. Just…don’t. I can’t handle the dick right now. ”
My jaw clenched as I stifled my laughter, trying to keep in the crass commentary about her last statement. She’d handled my dick just fine.
“Shut up.” The way she narrowed her eyes, and the finger pointed at my chest, should have been intimidating. Instead of shriveling my balls, it made my attraction to her flare to life, which I needed to get under control because athletic pants hid nothing.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Her hand reached out and smacked my arm before she shouldered her bag and nodded toward the door that led to the attached parking garage. It still befuddled me she didn’t have a car, but with the cost of gas and parking rising exponentially every year, I guess that using Uber was a solid economical choice. At least that was probably safer than taking the public transit at night. As a woman traveling alone, I wasn’t sure I’d trust people on the T after the evening rush hour was over. While I knew she prided herself on being independent, the world could be a dangerous place for women after dark.
“Did you get my emails?” she asked quietly while we fell into step together.
“I did. Thank you.”
“And have you talked to Evan yet?” Her voice was a little louder, and I could tell she was gearing up for a fight.
“Not yet.” Glancing over at her profile, I could see her mouth open, so without thinking about the implications, I reached out and squeezed her palm before she could get started. “He’s a morning person, so I’ll call him in the morning, but I already had the box of books waiting for same day delivery when I left my office.”
“Oh, good.” She shook her hand out, massaging her palm after I let go, and I had a hard time forcing myself not to react to the jolt I’d felt with her palm connected to mine.
I knew she was saving my ass on this one, and while Sloane’s idea for a collaboration with Isobel was sound, I still wondered if hiring an outside consultant might have been a better idea. Then the tension between us could have some time to dissipate, and I could figure out how to be in a meeting with her without getting a fucking hard-on like a teenager.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” she asked while she followed me up the ramp toward my parking space. One of the only perks I negotiated in my last contract was a reserved parking space included in my benefits package. Parking downtown was a bitch.
“At this point, what harm does it cause? Even if whoever he picks doesn’t work out, this may light a fire under his ass to get this manuscript past the rough draft.”
“Why wouldn’t they work out?”
Rolling my eyes, I crossed to the passenger side of my car, pulling the door open so she could slide into the seat. She opened her mouth to ask again, but I held up my hand as I started to swing the door closed. “Hold that thought.”
Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to psych myself up to spend another half hour trapped inside a vehicle with her. It’d been torturous to ride back to Boston from Bar Harbor. The only saving grace was that she hadn’t worn a skirt on the trip home as she had on the way up there. Honestly, though, my focus had been drawn more to her calm face while she was sleeping more than anything else. Something I don’t care to acknowledge because it would probably make me sound like a complete simp.
She was checking her email as I slid into the driver’s seat, pressed the button to start the ignition, and reached forward to turn down the music.
“You don’t think my authors can keep up with Evan? Then why did you need my help? Several of my authors are just as talented. Just because they don’t have the same mainstream success doesn’t diminish their abilities.”
Clenching my fingers on the leather of the steering wheel, I bit back the quick retort, realizing that one of us had to start diffusing the tension before things got heated.
“It’s not that they can’t keep up. It’s him. I’m unsure how he’ll handle having someone else look at his work. He barely tolerates me sometimes, but I know how to handle him.”
“He is a prima donna, then?”
Laughing at her continued use of the term, I tried to figure out a way to describe my most prolific author. I knew she hated it when I started going into rankings and sales, but behind all that, there was a quiet man I wasn’t always sure how to reach.
“Evan is special, not because of the accolades, but because his mind innately plans out a coherent plot line with little effort. Where some authors take months to construct a book and start cranking out words, he rarely takes longer than six weeks to draft and have a manuscript in my inbox. While we treat it like any other project, he doesn’t need a developmental edit most of the time.“ I paused to formulate my thoughts as I signaled to pull out into traffic. I knew where she lived, so she didn’t need to give me directions, but I still pulled up the street map on my car navigation. “When Sam did the first read-through on this project, he asked me if Evan had sent me his initial unedited draft instead of the rough draft.”
“Well, that’s never good. I can see why you’re worried.”
In my peripheral vision, I could see her fidgeting with her phone grip, but for once, she was listening to me instead of trying to pick a fight.
“While I know this isn’t ideal for either of us, Sam and I have only gotten so far with our suggestions. We need someone to work with him who knows what they’re doing. Someone who speaks author. I know we like to joke that editors are the unofficial co-writers for any book, but sometimes we can’t access that creative process like they can.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you had ulterior motives with this one. I know Evan doesn’t have a reputation for being difficult. I just thought you were manipulating me to make my life more difficult after… ”
Biting my tongue until I pulled to a stop outside her building, I turned in my seat. “I get you think I’m an arrogant asshole, and I’ll own that, but I would never go to Sloane to force you to do something. We need your help, and when she suggested working with you, I guess I underestimated exactly how much you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you.” She refused to look at me, continuing to spin the grip on the back of her phone while she stared at her lap.
“Could have fooled me. Once we got back to the office, it was like nothing ever happened while we were together in Maine. You shut me out before we even got in the car to come home. And if the silent treatment in the office wasn’t a sign, the glares aimed in my direction every time I opened my mouth were a pretty good indication.” I didn’t want to continue this fight, but we would have to rely on working together for the next few weeks at the minimum—probably longer as our interns collaborated on the edits for the new pages.
“I don’t know what you want from me. And I hate that I feed into your bullshit attitude. I don’t like the person I am when I fight with you.”
“Can you look at me?”
She hesitated, continuing to spin the grip in her fingers. Knowing it’d probably piss her off, I grabbed the phone and placed it into my cup holder before I tilted her chin toward me.
“I don’t want anything other than your professional help. There’s no manipulation here. I need you, and I don’t want to spend the next few months with you hating me. Is it possible to come to some sort of cease-fire? I’m not the only one picking fights here.”
“Stop the arrogant peacocking, and I’ll try to bite my tongue.” As her eyes met mine, I tamped down my physical reaction because I wanted to be the one who bit her tongue.
A charged moment seemed to pass between us while she looked up at me, her eyes darting around my face and briefly settling on my lips. The physical attraction I’d been fighting felt like another entity in the car, wrapping around us and sending a line of goosebumps up my neck. She kept fighting it, and I knew she’d deny it, but she wanted me too, despite all the antagonistic behavior.
“I’ll try,” I promised, reaching over and pressing the button to unlock her door. She sucked in a breath as I leaned across her body, and I knew I could have easily leaned back and pressed the unlock button on my side, but watching her reaction to my proximity was more fun.
“Let me know when you hear something.” She shoved her phone into an outside pocket of her bag, her eyes nervously darting around the car’s interior, anywhere but where I was watching her intently.
“You got it. I’ll call him in the morning, but I’ll lean on him if I don’t hear back by the end of next week. Thank you again. I do appreciate this.”
“Night,” she mumbled before she pushed the door open, darting across the sidewalk and swiping a key card on the electronic lock outside her building.
As I pulled back into traffic, I wondered if this temporary truce and working together would ever address the elephant in the room. I knew what she looked like when she came, and I wanted to see it again. Desperately.