Chapter 13
brEE
Lunch rolled around and I sat in the hospital cafeteria, glaring at my Cobb salad.
I’d eaten a heroic amount of cake last night, washed it down with two glasses of wine, and I’d had zero regrets at the time, but today, I was trying to balance it out with greens, protein, and a little bit of self-respect.
None of which were helping my mood.
I stabbed a cherry tomato with my fork and popped it into my mouth, chewing like it’d pissed me off. While I was aware that I was taking all my frustrations out on the innocent little tomato, the salad wasn’t really what had me all twisted up.
That honor belonged to the infuriating man I could not stop thinking about, which was entirely unacceptable. How can I hate him and want him so badly at the same time?
Something had to be wrong with me. A neurological issue. A tumor. Maybe psychosis.
As I swallowed the tomato and stabbed something else in my bowl—I didn’t even look at what it was—with the same amount of vigor, I ran through all the reasons he sucked like a mental PowerPoint presentation.
He has a giant ego. Pesky tyrant tendencies. He can’t admit when he makes mistakes and he thinks profits trump humanity.
He was a walking red flag factory and yet… Damn him. Damn him and his stupid bone structure.
He’d looked hot as hell at the bakery last night, and maybe I’d just been jazzed up on frosting and wine, but I’d been dying to get a slice of him instead. That thought alone made me press my fork to my lips and scowl at nothing.
God. Get it together, Bree.
Maybe if he just didn’t talk, we could have a fun night together, but the man really didn’t know when to shut up.
That lecture he’d given us on his first day had been awful, like listening to the inauguration address of a dictator who’d installed himself into power and intended on staying there for the next fifty to eighty years.
But no matter how hard I shook my head to physically dislodge him from my brain, I still couldn’t stop thinking about him.
From the very first time I’d laid eyes on Sullivan Crowne when Mercedes had shown me that picture of him, I’d known he was insanely good looking, but his looks alone hadn’t been enough to distract me from my mission—or from hating him.
I could see a beautiful man and acknowledge that he was beautiful without throwing my morals and values right out the window to lust after him. Genetics were one thing. What I’d seen last night, however, had been something else.
As I chewed a piece of lettuce, the mental image of him joking around with Liana while I’d been watching them through the window drifted to my mind, the way he’d laughed and indulged her.
Then there was the fact that he’d shown up for his sister at all.
The man I’d thought he was wouldn’t have dragged his ass halfway across town to taste wedding cakes after a full day at work.
And then there had been the look on his face when she’d said that her fiancé had canceled, the hardening of his jaw and the flash of worry in his eyes. All of those things had humanized him to me, unfortunately, and now, I found myself genuinely wondering what he was really like.
A shadow falling across my table made me snap back to reality, and when I looked up, there he was. Sullivan Crowne in his masculine, bespoke-suited glory—and he was holding out a clear dessert container with a cannoli inside like he was offering it to me.
My brain short-circuited, but I couldn’t let him know that he’d just interrupted a good thirty-minute mental rant about him. “If you’re going to throw it at me, that’s fair. Just please don’t get it in my hair.”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “No. It’s for you. To eat. The regular way.”
I eyed the container suspiciously. “Is it poisoned? Filled with laxatives?”
“I think it’s filled with ricotta,” he said. “It’s a peace offering.”
Sullivan Crowne, tyrant billionaire overlord, was suddenly looking at me like we were friends—or worse, something flirt-adjacent.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He glanced around, clearly aware of the attention we were garnering from literally every other person in the cafeteria. “I thought we could talk.”
My laugh came out flat. “You thought wrong. If you’re here to lecture me again—”
“I’m not,” he said so quickly that he cut me off, but I had a feeling it hadn’t meant to be rude or dismissive. Eager, perhaps. “I’m here to call a ceasefire.”
“Wow.” I stared up at him, seeing nothing but sincerity in those clear, sapphire blue eyes. “Should I alert the UN?”
“You could, but just accepting the cannoli seems a lot simpler. Less red tape and bureaucracy.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you suddenly being like this?”
“Because you tried to come talk to me the right way the other day, and I was a total dick.”
I blinked. Hard. At least four times. “Excuse me? Are you actually apologizing?”
“It’s not something I do often.”
“Yeah, that tracks.”
“I’m here to listen now, though,” he said, undeterred. “I can’t promise I’ll agree to anything, but the least I can do is listen.”
My eyebrows shot up, but as my gaze held his, he really did seem contrite. It surprised the heck out of me, but maybe that was only because my guard had been calibrated for war with him, not diplomacy.
“Fine,” I said, glancing around and realizing that absolutely everyone was still watching us. “But not here. I don’t want people thinking we’re friends.”
He took a step back, but I swore I saw a spark of laughter in his eyes. “Oh, yeah. Definitely not. God forbid.”
I stood, ignoring all the looks we were getting, and walked in silence to his conference room office. The door closed behind us with a soft click that felt louder than it should have, and in the silence that followed, icy tentacles of panic wrapped themselves around my insides.
Sullivan was offering me the opportunity I’d wanted when I’d first come to this room, but today, I was wholly unprepared.
The speech I’d had planned that day was nowhere to be found in my brain, so instead, I just started babbling, listing all the obvious problems before the guy had even reached his chair.
“The paper gowns are a nightmare,” I said. “They’re thin, they’re scratchy, they don’t breathe, and they make patients feel exposed. Elderly patients. Post-op patients. People who are already scared and uncomfortable.”
He leaned back against the table, half sitting on the edge with his arms folded, but his eyes were on mine and his expression was attentive, like he was actually listening.
Oh, God. He’s really giving me a shot here. Please let me not mess this up. Please. Please.
“They rip when you sit,” I said carefully, desperately trying to control my voice so it wouldn’t come across like I was attacking him.
“They crinkle every time you move, so people feel like they’re sleeping inside a snack wrapper.
They don’t absorb anything, which is a hygiene issue and they make people feel cheap. Disposable.”
He frowned. “They meet industry standards.”
“Industry standards for who?” I shot back. “Robots?”
“Point taken. I don’t actually know what those standards are or how high the bar has been set.
” The ease of the concession shocked me to my core, but Sullivan just sighed and raked a hand through that sandy hair.
“They can’t be that uncomfortable, though.
I was assured that these are the Rolls Royce of paper gowns. ”
“Assured by who, the sales rep? That person who stands to make a big fat commission if they sign a hospital like ours?” I stared into his eyes, wondering if he’d heard a word the patients had said when they’d called him, but he wasn’t being combative.
He was actually trying to understand this time instead of digging in his heels.
“Okay, look. I understand that you didn’t just blindly purchase these particular gowns and that you may have been led to believe that there was nothing wrong with them, but put one on. ”
His eyebrows swept up. “What?”
“Put one on,” I repeated. “See if you can wear it for the rest of the day without wanting to rip it off. Sit in it. Walk with it on. Try to work, and concentrate, and hey, maybe even try to lie down and take a nap.”
He considered me for a beat, then nodded. “Fine. Challenge accepted. It really can’t be as bad as all that.”
I was still trying to process that he’d actually agreed when I realized that this was my chance. From the beginning, I’d been saying that he only thought those things were okay because he’d probably never had one on, and now, he was agreeing to try it, so I snapped out of my haze and nodded.
“I’ll go get one.” I darted out of the conference room and down the hall, coming back with a folded paper gown and holding it out to him. “There you go. Your Rolls Royce that’s going to turn out to be a junker from the nineteen-fifties.”
“There’s nothing wrong with cars from the fifties,” he said nonchalantly, even as he started stripping. “It was a great era for the automotive industry.”
Shock rendered me speechless when I realized he was in the process of getting naked—or at least mostly naked—right there in front of me.
“Whoa.” My hands flew up to cover my eyes when I finally remembered how basic motor functions… functioned. “What are you doing?”
He paused, his fancy jacket already off. “I’m putting on the gown. That was the plan, right? That I actually have to wear it?”
“Yeah, but I’m still in here. Let me just go wait—”
“Why?” He shrugged, carefully hanging his jacket over a chair. “You see naked people all day, every day. This is no different. I’m just a guy putting on a gown.”
When he reached for the buttons of his shirt, I averted my gaze and stared—very professionally—at the ceiling. My pulse started doing unholy things, my entire body suddenly buzzing with awareness of what was happening right now. It didn’t help that, try as I might, I couldn’t stop sneaking glances.
Sullivan wasn’t making a show of getting undressed.
There was nothing performative about it at all, actually, but the casual confidence made it worse.
I saw his broad shoulders under his shirt, the lean muscle in his arms when the buttons were all undone and he slipped the garment off.
Then the undershirt went next and I nearly moaned out loud.
In my periphery, I could see it all. The stacked abs that were defined enough to be noticeable but not overly carved. That sexy line at his hips. The rippling in his arms when he moved. Oh, God. The rippling.
He had the kind of body that was built by genetics and discipline, not mirrors. Just breathe, Bree. Breathe, don’t stare.
Since I refused to let him see how flustered this was making me, I just refocused my gaze on the ceiling. Until his pants came off, at which point, the very best I could do was to not stare actively, but rather going for an expression of professional disinterest as I flicked my eyes over him.
Thank God, he kept his underwear on, but the thin fabric left little to the imagination and he was packing some serious heat down there. In an effort not to gawk, I focused on the paper gown he’d set down on the table like it was a flotation device and I was drowning.
“Are you going to help me?” he asked, gesturing toward the gown.
I nodded and stepped closer, swallowing in a futile attempt to make moisture return to my mouth. “Right. Sure.”
With each step I took, the space between us shrank until I could smell him—his scent clean, like spice and citrus, expensive but restrained. It was heavenly. Divine.
Focus, Bree.
Finally managing to convince my hands to move, I picked up the gown and lifted it, slipping the awful paper over his shoulders, but as I did it, my fingers brushed warm skin and I almost shivered. Stop it, you’re being ridiculous.
It didn’t matter how many people I did this for every day, though. How many times in the past I’d completed these very motions. The muscle memory helped me get the gown on him, but this wasn’t the same.
It was very, very different. I was hyper aware of how close he was, that delicious scent of him, and that he was wearing very little clothes, and the only thing I could think was, If I start drooling, at least the paper will soak it up.