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There was no logic to the feeling. It wasn’t anything I could explain or excuse to the rest of the world. And it didn’t suddenly eliminate all the multitude of ways that the two of us having anything more than a temporary arrangement would be wrong.
But as he finished his task and bent to kiss me again, his eyes met mine, and an emotion-drunk voice slithered silently through my mind.
This can’t be an ending.
I won’t let it be.
Chapter Thirteen
Reagan
I was in love with Thatcher Pennington.
That had become clear the moment he’d called me sweetheart instead of running in horrified disgust when I’d gotten emotional during sex—a thing I’d never done, ever, in my entire try-sexual history, with any partner or variety of partners, no matter how hot they were or how inebriated I was, no matter how wildly inappropriate the setting or the participants.
I had always said you could enjoy sex better when you kept the emotional significance out of it. It was easier to concentrate on getting off when you weren’t worried that whichever side of the bed you flopped on postorgasm was going to be your side, forever and ever amen.
And yes, okay, maybe after JT and Flynn found each other again, I’d started to think it might be nice to fall in love someday. To have someone look at me with the fiery devotion Flynn gave my brother in every passing glance. But I’d thought about summiting Mount Kilimanjaro, too, when I’d seen someone doing it on Instagram, and that didn’t mean I was going to throw on my flip-flops and start climbing willy-nilly.
It figured that with Thatcher, nothing about love had gone the way I’d expected, not from the moment I’d agreed to a proposition from a bossy mystery man and found myself kissing my actual boss. Thatcher was so much more than the hot, unattainable teenage fantasy I’d thought he was. He was dominant, yes, but also open-minded and fair, and my heart squeezed thinking of how very responsible he felt for the people in his life—his employees, his lover, the son who hadn’t bothered answering one of Thatcher’s dozens of check-in texts this week. When I was alone with Thatcher, even before we’d come together last night, his proximity had made my heart pound in a way that it simply hadn’t for anyone else, with a strong, fast rhythm that showed the stakes were higher.
It also figured that I found myself in this predicament—up this damn mountain—with no plan for how to get down gracefully. Confessing my feelings might make me feel better for half a second, but what good would it do? Thatcher liked me, I knew he did, and trusted me, too, but was he going to push aside all his priorities, all those things he felt responsible for, to date his most junior junior employee, who was almost twenty years younger than him, his politician friend’s son, and no longer on speaking terms with Brantleigh? In the immortal words of Trent Wellbridge when I’d asked him to let me manage his campaign social media, “Hahaha! Reagan, son, what would a man want to do that for?”
So, I fell back on doing what I always did when I had things to say that couldn’t be spoken—I smiled and charmed and said nothing of substance while trying very hard not to get snippy with the beautiful man who’d done nothing to deserve it. The rest of the drive to Omaha was filled with a mix of shallow banter, shop talk, and an unusually high number of odd looks from Thatcher.
I understood his confusion. I was giving him the kind of hot-and-cold treatment one might have expected in a medieval torture spa. But I was confused and conflicted, too. And if he felt me attempting to pull away from him like I had in Kansas, at least this time, he didn’t question me about it. On some level, he had to understand that the more we talked, the more we shared, the more… entwined we got, the harder it would be to unpluck ourselves from one another in Honeybridge.
The good news was I managed to get a lot of work done. I contacted several news outlets, explaining our change of schedule, and even though it was a Sunday, a surprising number got back to me immediately and agreed to cover Thatcher’s Honeybridge appearances. I created some reports on our increased social media engagement and copied them to everyone in PR. And I managed to draft a couple of new posts for the PennCo Instagram using photos Thatcher and I had taken in Colorado.
One of the shots I found in our shared picture library was a solo picture of me that Thatcher had taken during our ski trip when I wasn’t looking. I was standing alone in my brand-new gear, hands on my hips, staring out at the snowy mountain and the brightly colored skiers just outside the frame. I was pretty sure I’d been thinking sappy thoughts of Thatcher at that moment—about the irony of having the lift up the ski run being the terrifying part of the experience, rather than the moguls and the death-defying speed on the way down, and wishing I could always be there to hold his hand when he needed me—but if any of that had been visible on my face, you couldn’t tell from the angle of the shot. Instead, I looked strong. Resilient. Capable. So I stole the picture and uploaded it to my personal Instagram, needing the little dopamine rush I always got when I posted.
It took me a lot longer than it usually did to come up with a caption, though. I typed and deleted more than Thatcher did when he was sending a text to Brantleigh. In the end, I decided on To fresh powder and new adventures! #wanderer #eyesonthepinnacle #keepmovingforward and hit Post. And if the cheerful words felt a little forced this time, more like a lie than a reframing of the truth, well, that was just a sign that I really needed the reminder they provided. I needed to control the things I could control, like building my career, attaining my goals… and not making it any harder or more humiliating to end this fling with Thatcher than it already would be.
When it came time to sleep for the night, I didn’t even need to fake the excruciating headache that my stress and confusion had caused. Thatcher had insisted I head back to his room to lie down shortly after our dinner stop, and I’d fallen dead asleep before he’d even finished talking to McGee about the arrangements January had made for replacement drivers.
Upon our arrival in Omaha the following morning, we rushed to a sustainability event hosted by Union Pacific. Layla had arranged a private brunch with several key executives from the railway company, and we knew there would be a couple of reporters included to cover the high-level meet-up to give both companies good coverage for their efforts at sustainability.
When we walked into the elegant dining room, Thatcher was immediately hailed by the event organizers. Meanwhile, I was met by another familiar, smiling face.
“Reagan,” Chris Acton said warmly. “Nice to see you again so soon. I’d heard a rumor your schedule was changing. Wasn’t sure you were going to stop here after all.”
I shook his outstretched hand. “Thatcher didn’t want to miss it. But your rumor was correct. We’re headed to Maine after this. To Honeybridge?—”
“Oh, I know,” Chris interrupted with a smile. “I’ll be there, too. Layla called me to make sure I followed along.” He began to add something else but stopped himself, and I wondered if he was hoping to try to ferret out more information about Nova Davidson like he had in last week’s interview.
If so, good luck to Chris because I had no new information to give him even if I wanted to. We’d been getting updates on the security team’s investigation, but they didn’t seem any closer to finding the culprit… and probably never would. There were simply too many people who had access to the samples and too few people who had the desire to defy Layla. Last I’d heard, they were looking into former employees to see if anyone was holding a grudge.
If Chris wanted a scoop, he’d be better off talking to Nova—or cultivating a source close to her since Nova was keeping quiet on the advice of her legal team—but that seemed like a lot of effort for a story that didn’t seem to be generating much public interest anymore. PennCo had weathered the storm, thanks to our quick action—thanks to Thatcher—and we’d be ending the tour in better shape than we’d been even before the Nova debacle.
“So…” Chris went on. “You, me, Honeybridge?”
Thinking of Thatcher had me scanning the room for him, watching as our host introduced him to several other executives. “Mmm? Oh, yes, Honeybridge is lovely,” I said with an absent nod. “You’ll like it.”
Chris folded his arms over his chest. He was shorter and slighter than me, and the pose made him look a bit like my mother’s dog when she was irked about something. “I already like it. I especially liked sucking you off in your parents’ boat house last June… remember?”
“Huh?” I swiveled my head to look at him fully, then darted a look around us to make sure no one had overheard. “Shit, Chris,” I whisper-hissed, face flaming. “Don’t talk about that here. It’s a professional gathering, and I’m working.”
“Is that what you call it?” His smile was back but wry this time. “You haven’t taken your eyes off your boss since you walked in.”
