Chapter 11 #2
Brielle rakes her gaze over my bare forearms, slowly lifting her eyes to my chest. A smirk tugs at my lips as I do nothing but watch her.
Finally, after far too long to be appropriate and far too quick for my heated blood, her eyes snap to mine.
A blush creeps up her neck, and she spins around, examining my place with a lot more hurry than she was examining me. Christ, she’s pretty.
I close the door on those thoughts, not willing to contemplate what her gaze on me means or why I like it so much.
When dinner is ready, I make our plates and set them on the table. “What would you like to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having is fine,” she says, her smile tentative.
I pour us each a glass of pinot gris. Based on her reaction to the wine at the restaurant, I’m hoping this will be okay. It’s considered a dry wine, but it’s on the sweeter end of the scale, and about the sweetest my palette can take.
Brielle goes in for her first bite, and I sit back and wait for her response. I know it’s good, but I’m holding my breath that she approves.
“Holy shit,” she says, then covers her mouth while she finishes the bite. “You made this?”
“You know I did. You watched me,” I say. A weight lifts, and I feel unusually proud of myself.
“Yeah, but this is good. Like really good.” Her doe eyes get even bigger, like the larger they are, the more she means it. I shouldn’t find it as adorable as I do.
I take my first bite and have to agree. I already knew I made this dish well; that’s why I chose it. But tonight, it came out even better than usual.
“One more thing I know about my fake boyfriend: he can cook.” She smiles at me, shaking her head a little like she still can’t believe it.
We eat in silence for a minute. It isn’t like she can ask or answer questions when she’s shoveling food into her mouth by the forkful.
“So, what made you get into accounting?” I ask when it seems like she’s either done or taking a break.
She seems to consider it for a moment before she answers. “Good job prospects. It’s stable,” she says. “And I’ve always been good with numbers.” It looks like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t. “What about you? Has marketing always been in your blood?”
I check that she’s done and then collect our plates and bring them to the sink. Brielle follows me to the living room, and we each settle in on opposite sides of the couch.
“I grew up around it. My father was in the industry, too. A long time ago.”
“He was in advertising before…?” She trails off her thought, folding herself onto the couch and tucking her legs beneath her.
I don’t like to talk about that time in my father’s life.
His name was dragged through the mud at a time when he was at his lowest. He split from his wife, he split from his business partner, and his clients jumped ship when he was too distracted with a messy, heated divorce to keep his business afloat.
He tried to rebuild, but in the end, he put his efforts into helping me grow CreativEdge instead.
His contacts and relationships are what got me off the ground in those early years.
“Yes. Seems to run in the family,” is all I say to Brielle.
She looks around my penthouse suite. The city lights shine through the large glass windows, highlighting the golden threads in her hair.
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
I don’t know where she’s going with this, if she can tell that I was holding back on my previous answer. Personal questions, personal relationships… they aren’t really my thing.
“I think it’s my turn for a question,” I say instead of turning her down.
She rolls her eyes, calling me on my avoidance without words. “Go ahead,” she says, waving her hand around her face.
My mind immediately goes to her last relationship, the last man she let into her bed.
Thankfully, I’m smart enough not to go there.
At some point in the night, she’s stopped feeling like my employee and more like a date.
But she is my employee, and she isn’t in my apartment, tucked onto my couch, because she wants to be.
She’s here because she has to be. Any other thought is a fantasy, and a dangerous one at that.
“When is your birthday?” Safe. Appropriate. Not fucking creepy, which is the most important thing.
Brielle let out a surprised chuckle, her mirth building and building until she’s roaring with laughter. She has to work to take a breath and collect herself, her eyes shining with unshed tears.
“You good?” I deliver, displaying all the emotions of a crabapple.
She wipes under her eyes. “Yes. Sorry about that.” She chuckles again, quietly this time. “November 14.”
I nod, like an idiot.
We continue to lob question after question at each other, trying to get as much information about each other as we can, both of us staying away from anything too personal.
It starts to feel more like an interview than a date. Which is good. It shouldn’t feel like a date, because it’s not.
Brielle yawns, and when I glance at the clock, I realize it’s almost 10:00 p.m.
“Let me get you home. It’s late,” I say.
“You don’t have to take me. I can call an Uber,” she says through another yawn.
I don’t bother to respond, getting up and helping her to her feet.
We’ve both taken our shoes off at some point throughout the evening.
I’m bent over, tying my laces, when her delicate feet come into view.
Her perfect arch slips into her heel. I stay where I am just so I can watch her other foot glide into that curved black pump. My blood heats.
Fuck. I’m even more hard up than I thought if this is what’s doing it for me.
I pull up to her apartment ten minutes later and get out, walking her to the front door of her building.
“Here is fine,” she says. “You don’t have to walk me up to my apartment.”
“Okay.” For some reason, we can’t seem to figure this out. At times, we’re comfortable, even friendly, with each other. But other times, like now, an awkwardness settles around us.
“You doing alright, Ms. Collins?” The homeless man from the first time I picked Brielle up is here again. He must feel the weird tension between us because he looks like he’s about ready to tell me off.
“I’m good, Pete. Thanks.” Brielle smiles at him.
He looks at me for a long moment before moving his gaze back to Brielle with a quick nod. I like him.
“Good night, Brielle.” She tilts her head up to me. The urge to kiss her surges through me, just like it did last time. The energy around us shifts. Her pretty pink lips part, and I can’t pull my eyes away from them.
“Night, Damian.”
I wish I knew what was going through that pretty little head of hers. I’m sure it isn’t the same wayward thoughts that scatter through mine. Her soft skin pulls me to her without even thinking. I brush a lock of hair behind her ear. “Same time tomorrow?”
“Okay,” she says, her voice shaky.
I shouldn’t be the person causing her heart to beat faster.
And I really shouldn’t like it as much as I do. And with that thought, I tuck my hand back into my pocket, safely away from her touch.
The next night, we go through the same motions.
And then the night after that. I pick Brielle up at the café after work and take her back to my apartment.
I make dinner for us, and we sit on the couch, sometimes talking, sometimes just being in each other’s company.
I usually hate having company at my house, and every night, I’m waiting for that feeling to hit, the impatience and annoyance of having to “entertain” someone, but it never comes.
I don’t feel like I have to be on all the time. My sharp edges soften every time she makes herself at home in my space. I can feel the lines wanting to blur, and every day, I have to remind myself that this is a temporary, strategic arrangement, nothing more.
By the end of the week, I’m actually looking forward to our evening together.
Brielle walks by my office at 5:00 p.m., never looking my way.
She’s careful that no one knows that we’re spending time together.
It wouldn’t be a good look for me to be caught entertaining an employee off hours in my own home, but for some reason, it bothers me that it’s Brielle who’s so concerned about it.
I’m grateful that I haven’t needed to have some awkward talk with her about the importance of keeping our arrangement discreet, but would a friendly wave or smile be too much?
I have to admit, with my reputation around this office… yes, it probably would be.
I give her a five-minute lead like usual. She’s sitting on a stool in front of the window with her phone to her ear when I walk in. Her blue eyes lock on mine, and my feet move toward her like she’s controlling them with her mind.
“Ev. Evelyn. Evelyn.” Her voice gets progressively higher until she’s shouting into the phone at her sister.
A tidbit I remember from the other night.
“I’m meeting someone for dinner. He’s here now…
No, I didn’t say it was a date… No, that doesn’t mean I’m free for you to hook me up with Jeremy…
Are you really not going to drop this?” She listens for a minute, huffing and rolling her eyes.
Whoever the fuck Jeremy is, Brielle clearly wants no part of him.
She looks at me again, mouthing an apology while she waits for her sister to finish.
“Okay, love you, Ev. I’ll talk to you later. ”
“Everything good?” I ask, reaching out to help her off her stool.
She places her hand in mine, and tingles light up every nerve ending up my arm.
Her eyes suddenly shine, and she shamelessly rakes them over me slowly from head to toe.
My body reacts to her perusal in a visceral way; my heart pumps faster, heat floods every place her gaze touches, and a shot of lust shoots through my system as blood rushes to my dick.
“You know how you owe me for this weekend?” she says.
I couldn’t have heard her right. Did she seriously just say that I owe her?
“What?” I hold the door open for her and lead her to my car, opening the door for her. She slides inside, tucking her feet in, but before I close the door, I lean in. “Did you say that I owe you?”
She smiles at me, a devious grin that is equal parts concerning and sexy as hell.
I shake my head, closing her in, and round the car.
This ought to be good.
“I need a favor,” she says as I drive us back to my apartment.
“What kind of favor?”
“The correct response is ‘Of course, Brielle, you’re forced to give up so much of your time to help me in my time of need, and I am eternally grateful.’”
“What kind of favor?” I repeat, irrationally irritated all of a sudden.
“I need you to be my date,” she says, casual as can be.
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Her voice goes up three octaves, completely incredulous that I would deny her.
“Just that. No.” We agreed to one weekend. Every day that I spend in her company toes the line of what is appropriate as it is, and knowing that it has been such a burden to her all week solidifies that in my mind. I need to get through this weekend and back to my regular business.
“You owe me, big-time, and I’m calling it in,” she gripes.
“I don’t owe you anything,” I tell her. “You’re the reason we’re in this mess. You wouldn’t have been forced to spend your weeknights with me preparing for this weekend retreat if you weren’t the one to agree to it in the first place,” I bite out.
She doesn’t hold back her attitude, responding with a bold sass.
“I wouldn’t have been at that dinner at all if I didn’t do you the original favor of going to that dinner with you.
You started this, not me. You came into my office looking for a date, remember?
Now, I’m doing you a favor by going on this trip. The least you could do is repay it.”
“I didn’t realize this was such an imposition, considering you signed us up for it.
I wouldn’t want to force you to spend any more time with me.
” I sound like a petulant toddler, and I know it.
It shouldn’t bother me that Brielle has more exciting things to do with her weeknights than spend them with her boss, but it irks me all the same.
Brielle lets out a heavy sigh beside me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. This week has been really nice.
I just need to bring a date with me to my family thing—the one that I asked the day off for—so that my bitchy cousin stops pitying me because she ended up with my high school boyfriend, and since we’re already fake dating… ” She trails off.
I’m not considering it. I don’t need to spend any more time alone with Brielle. So I don’t know why I ask, “Is that where Jeremy comes into the picture?”
“Yes. My sister, in her classic optimism, wants to hook me up with a friend of her husband’s.” Her shoulders slump, and she leans back into her seat, sinking into it. “I guess it will be better than going alone. I’ll call her back and tell her to set it up, if he’s still willing to go with me.”
Red-hot jealousy rips through me. Any man who has a chance to take her out and doesn’t find a way to be available is an idiot. “This is that thing two weeks from now?”
She looks at me, hope shining in her eyes, and my chest constricts. I keep my attention on the road, otherwise I’ll find myself agreeing just so I don’t have to see her disappointment.
“Yes. Does that mean you’ll come with me? Please?” she pleads.
It turns out that keeping my eyes on the road doesn’t help at all. I still can’t bring myself to squash the hopefulness in her voice.
“Fine,” I agree.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she squeals, leaning over and planting a kiss to the scruff of my jaw.
I turn my head in surprise, but she’s already looking down at her phone, the smallest grin still playing on her lips. The feel of them still hot on my skin.
I know that agreeing to this will be a huge mistake, but right now, it sure doesn’t feel like it.