“Second, I’m her best friend. Nothing will change that, so like I said, she wants us to be friends. I’m here to make that happen.”
“It won’t happen.”
He gets up just as the waitress returns with two beers.
“You can get this, right?” Griffin looks at me, and I swear to god, I want to punch this jack-off in the face.
Of course, for Nat, I keep my ass in my chair.
Here I thought I was coming for a “let's be friends” beer. Well, the joke’s on me. This guy shows up thinking he can scare me away from the most important person in my life.
News flash, Griffin. That won’t happen.
Natalie Miller deserves better than you, and I’m about to tell her.
CHAPTER SIX
NATALIE
Nora hands me a glass of wine as soon as I’ve set up my things in her home office. Hero is out of town for the night at a signing a few hours away, so in order for her to avoid a babysitter, I agreed to work at her place tonight.
Nora Quinn and I run a marketing company for authors. We work closely with both publishing houses and independent authors. Nora started this business right out of college, and since I was still a bit undecided on what I wanted to do with my degree in marketing, she took me on as an assistant until I could figure it out. I originally thought it would be easier to be hired by a big company that guarantees a salary than to create my own business and venture into the unknown. Turns out, the unknown kicks ass when it involves something you love.
Plus, a part of me thought I’d have joined the author side of this world by this point.
Tonight is just a meeting, no actual client work, so we’ll drink wine. Or rather, I’ll drink wine while Nora chugs water.
We try to get together at least once a week to plan and keep our schedules lined up. Tonight is that night. Griffin is coming in on a late flight, so it made sense to work.
I glance into my cup and realize it’s almost full. Is this on purpose, or was she distracted?
“Did you get any sleep last night?” I ask, taking a sip as she sits down with a big sigh. I don’t really care about how much is in here—I’m drinking it just the way she gave it to me.
“Yes, but I still can’t seem to get adjusted to waking up all through the night. It’s almost as if the moment she sets a new sleep schedule and I get used to it, she sets a new one and the process repeats over and over and over. I’ll get it figured out, though. No need to worry.”
“I can stay longer tonight to babysit if you want a nap,” I offer and then open my computer.
She’s quiet, so I turn to see what she’s doing. She’s staring blankly at the wall behind me.
“Nora.” I wave a hand in front of her.
She blinks and then laughs.
“Thank you, but I’m okay today. Another day though, I might take you up on that.”
“Well, I'll be here for a couple of hours. Plenty of time for you to change your mind.”
She grabs one of the cookies I brought.
“This is reward enough. Did you see the new copy Tobias sent over yesterday morning at like six in the morning? Does he even sleep?”
Less now that it seems he can’t figure out his writing career. I want to bring up the co-writing thing again, but I don't want to stress him out. It just seems like a good way for him to get out of his box.
Plus, I just keep thinking about how writing was always something I wanted to try. Initially, I thought I’d do it alone, but the more I think about it, the more I want to do it with Tobias.
“Barely,” I answer Nora’s question. “But yeah, I was up, too, and already scheduled them. Well, as far out as I could. We did a bunch the other night.”
“Damn. Am I slacking too much? Do you feel like you have to do both of our jobs and still make time to check out venues?”
