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One simple gesture and a few moments of eye contact from her were all it seemed to take.
I told myself not to ask, but the words came anyway. “What makes you so knowledgeable about this sort of thing.”
Lola raised an eyebrow. “Did you hit your head when you fell?”
I glared in response, but it only seemed to amuse her.
She smiled, folding her arms. “That just sounds like a question a normal human being would ask. An angry, grumpy robot wouldn’t ask his lowly employee a personal question.”
“Forget I asked,” I said stiffly.
But Lola kept looking at me as if I hadn’t tried to brush her off. She rocked back to sit cross-legged beside me, resting her hands on her knees. She was looking more at my ankle while she spoke and hardly at me. She even leaned in and fiddled with the bandage a few times while her free hand rested on my leg. “In college I actually wasn’t sure if I wanted to go into business or teaching. But I thought one of the trainers was cute and ended up working an internship with the physical therapists on campus for two years. I saw a ton of injuries just like this.”
I waited for her to say more. Frustratingly, I was hungry for her to say more. She’d given me a taste of what went on in her mind and all it did was tempt me to know all there was to know. Where were her parents? What was she running from? What was that life back in New York she’d hinted at but didn’t seem to want to explain? The questions burned on the tip of my tongue, but I decided to ask what felt like the least likely to show how curious I was about her. “What made you decide against teaching?”
She looked down, plucking a loose thread from my bandage free and twisting it around her finger. “A guy.”
I tried to physically press my lips together so I wouldn’t ask, but it was a wasted effort. I knew I would just fall on my ass if I got up and tried to leave, so I was stuck right there for the moment anyway. I might as well pass the time with conversation. That’s all this was. A temporary distraction. I wasn’t truly interested in Lola or her past. All my curiosity was just… Fuck. I had no idea what it was, but I refused to accept I was interested in my employee as anything more than a tool to help me save my company.
“He didn’t want you in sports science?” I found myself asking.
“He had a family business, actually. A financial advisory firm. His grandfather started it and it was kind of an expectation that the men in his family would go into the business. He and I were planning to get married after college pretty much since we met in high school. He convinced me that I’d be happier working for my future husband, and… Well, I was dumb enough to agree. So I committed the rest of my credits to business and dropped the sports science stuff.”
“He sounds like an asshole. No offense.”
Her eyes lit up and she looked at me suddenly with a grin. “No offense? Mr. Stone, I didn’t think you’d ever care if someone took offense from what you said.”
“It’s not my place to criticize your fiancé. That’s all.”
“Former fiancé,” she corrected. “And I’m surprised you believe anything falls outside the realm of ‘your place.’”
It took almost everything I had, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask any more questions because I could feel how the air had shifted between us. Lola may have been a pain in my ass, but she was too sweet to hold a grudge. I saw that now. If I so much as gave her the slightest opening, she’d give me all her trust and acceptance. She’d forgive all my asshole behavior until now. She’d open up to me and be as friendly as she was to everyone else.
I couldn’t afford that. I wouldn’t be able to resist her if that happened. And if I couldn’t resist Lola, I’d be one step closer to what the board of directors wanted. I’d get distracted, the performance of the company would shift, and in a few months, I’d be following in the footsteps of my brothers.
I took a deep breath, and then stood, putting as much of my weight on my good ankle as I could.
“Hey,” Lola said, rushing to her feet and taking my shoulder in her hands. I saw her eyes flick to where she was touching me and then back to my ankle. “That wasn’t fifteen minutes.”
“I can rest at home.”
“That’s really your home?” she asked. “The top floor of a corporate building? I mean, no offense,” she said with a playful grin. “But wouldn’t you be happier with a normal house? Fairhope is an adorable little town. You’d love it if you ever left this tower.”
