Chapter 11
Elliot would still be asleep when I got up at six. By the time I got back from my run, he’d be in the shower, and by the time I’d showered, he’d be in that familiar pants-shirt combo I’d come to know, having a protein smoothie in the kitchen.
Within the week, it had become an accidental routine; dancing around each other until it was time to get to work.
I’d try to leave the apartment unnoticed, just to get a head start to the office. So far, though, I hadn’t been successful—Elliot always noticed and insisted on walking with me.
Most evenings, he wouldn’t come straight back home.
He’d have a thing, meet a friend, go to the gym, and make sure, with everything that he was, to remind me of my lack of a social life.
While he was out having fun, I was working.
Picking up his slack, and whatever tasks he deemed himself above, apparently.
My Sunday was supposed to look the same. He’d left for a “luncheon” (who the fuck called it luncheon?) at noon, and I didn’t think he’d come back until I was already asleep. Thought I’d have my peace with an overpriced drink at the coffee shop by the office.
I’d thought wrong.
“I’m definitely team pink for Daphne,” I said as I searched through the prints laid out on the small table until I found the shade I wanted. Elliot watched carefully from across the table, where, uninvited, he’d gotten comfortable about half an hour earlier. “Soft, dreamy—almost pastel.”
“I know it’s cliché, but shouldn’t we go with something . . . I don’t know. Something green? Brown? Earthy?”
“You want Daphne Martin to wear a brown dress?” Hypothetical question, so I didn’t wait for an answer. “Should we go back to the leaves-in-hair idea, too?”
“Why pink?”
“Because it’s her color!” I cried, half amused, half frustrated. “Have you done no research at all?”
“That’s what I have you for.” He paired the words with a look, raised his brows as our eyes connected. “Right?”
You don’t have me for anything, I thought. “Then why are you disagreeing with your head researcher?”
“Hey.” Lifting his hands innocently, he straightened. His knee bumped mine below the table. “Just saying what comes to mind. Pink. I get it.” He went back to the pictures scattered across the table. “Like a pretty flower. Or that beach in the Bahamas.”
“There’s a pink beach in the Bahamas?” I heard the words come out of my mouth, but my mind was elsewhere. Specifically, on where his knee was still touching mine with no indication of moving anytime soon.
Elliot gasped, awed at the fact I didn’t know about Harbour Island, showed me first the Google results, then a picture of him, there—obviously. Tan skin, the beginning of a six-pack on full display. And, yes, a pink beach. Which was what I was supposed to focus on, anyway.
An idea—something close to inspiration, maybe—tickled the back of my mind at the sight.
Not of Elliot’s perfect body, but that sand.
The shade of pink (much more subtle in his original pictures than the edited versions online), the texture, the overall look.
Like I was this close to a breakthrough, but his leg still against mine, touch searing my skin, was blocking any rational thought.
I nodded grandly, totally overdoing it and not caring. Anything to shake that feeling off. Reaching for my cup, I took a long sip of my iced coffee just to feel something other than that incessant buzzing in my stomach.
It helped. A little.
“Exactly that pink,” I mumbled. “The real one, though. How hard is it to find out the exact shade, do you think? Like, the color code of it.”
“I’d say let’s book a flight and pick some up. But—”
“That’s illegal?”
“And I’m cut off.” He shrugged. “Both valid reasons to explore other options. Shouldn’t be hard, though. No.”
“Poor Elliot Ashwood can’t charter private jets anymore.
” I faked a pout, and he nudged my knee under the table, letting me know he was just as aware of our limbs touching.
The weight of him against me didn’t just leave a red sheen on my cheeks behind, but a pleasant weight in the pit of my stomach.
“You should know me better by now,” he tutted. “I don’t do that. I care about the environment, remember?”
I snorted and realized a second too late that he was being serious. “Oh, come on.” I gave him a look that said as much. “You pretend to care to score some brownie points. No shame in the game. We have to do what we have to do.”
I, for example, had called the paparazzi on you.
That fact alone should make spending time with him unbearable. It was a constant reminder that we were not colleagues, not casual roommates, not really friends, and definitely not going to tip into another category.
“Do it for what?” he asked, his attention shifting from the prints on the table back to me. Really inspecting me. His leg bounced once beneath the table—like he wanted to make sure mine was still there.
“To win?” His confusion confused me. “To make sure I won’t get that full-time position.”
I needed to tread carefully now. Yes, I knew he’d been forced to take that internship, and I knew what he stood to lose if he wasn’t better than me. But Elliot was none the wiser about the fact that I knew.
“And why would I care whether you get it or not?”
“If I get it, it means you won’t, and I assume Ashwoods don’t do well with losing. I’m pretty sure you’ve never lost anything in your life, actually. Not really.” Not yet, anyway.
Elliot considered me thoroughly and deeply, as if he could see right through my head. He said nothing for a long moment, simply watching.
I was scared he might just blurt out I know what you did by the end of it. Until now, I hadn’t realized how heavy that text to The New York Goss weighed on my conscience. I shouldn’t feel bad for him. I didn’t.
Finally, Elliot sighed. “I think you underestimate me.”
“Do I?”
“You think I’m a shallow rich kid who does nothing all day but eat expensive food, drink expensive wine, and complain about all the expensive things he doesn’t have.”
“Well.” I cleared my throat. “At the moment, you do work at least forty hours a week, so that’s something.”
A single laugh slipped out of his mouth, but there was nothing humorous in the sound. “It all looks so easy from the outside. Trust me, it’s not. You wouldn’t survive a week with my schedule, Maeve.”
He was starting to sound ridiculous. “Wining and dining, hanging out in your family’s penthouse, getting drinks with socialites and movie stars and models. It all must be so terribly hard for you, Elliot.”
“Try it, then.”
My breath hitched. “What?”
He raised his brows, a challenge in that dark blue of his eyes I knew I couldn’t turn down, even before he’d spelled it out. “A week with my schedule. I’ll take you. Wining and dining, hanging out with my family, getting drinks. If that’s all I do, it’ll be a piece of cake. Right?”
The smile on his face when we shook on it told me I might’ve just dug my own grave.
But spending a week with him meant I might learn things about him, his habits, his routine—and could easily use the knowledge against him in our upcoming battle.
War strategy, that’s what it was. That’s why I agreed.