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Chapter Three
Hangovers had neverbeen an issue for me. I could hold my liquor with the best of them, and had drunk my friends under the table more than once.
But as I got ready for work, my eyes burned in protest of being open, my skull throbbed, and my mouth felt like I’d slept with cotton stuffed in it. I could stand to sleep for another fifty years.
Which meant never seeing my friends again. And surrendering my dream of moving into a Director position similar to Luke’s. That would suck. It also meant not working with Luke anymore. That would save me a lot of awkwardness... but it would also suck.
I shook aside the darkish gray thoughts and got ready for work. I wasn’t running late according to office time, but I was for me. I liked to get there by seven thirty, because it gave me time to settle into the day before anyone else showed up.
Was last night a mistake? Obvious answer was yes, but every time I brushed something across my lips—my fingers, the toothbrush, lip gloss—I swore I still felt Luke. And now we could never do that again.
Was it really better to have made out and lost than never to have made out at all?
Depended on how the next few weeks of fumbling through, pretending nothing happened, went.
That should have been the last of those thoughts, but no, variations on the same repeated my entire drive to work, and when I settled into my desk, I was treated to the sequel.
No new email should have come in between last night and this morning, so I let my computer load while I went to fetch coffee from the break room. If I ventured to the cafeteria downstairs, I could get extra espresso and more sugar than should be possible in a single drink, but that meant facing other people. I wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
When I got back to my desk, there was an email from Luke. Just his name made my heart do a funny dance, set to the Final Fantasy battle music. I needed to get that under control. How long could I hide in my office before anyone wanted face-to-face interaction?
According to Luke’s email, another thirty-seven minutes. Mandatory team meeting. Bullpen. 8:30.
Hurrah.
There was another email from Mike, my counterpart in our Sacramento office. I didn’t always care for him, but I respected his work ethic, considering it was an hour earlier there.
You didn’t get those files delivered that you promised. Waiting since last week.
Yeah, I didn’t care for him at all, especially since he’d copied Luke in a way that felt like I’m telling the boss on you.
I forwarded him the message in question, that I’d sent when I said I would, with my nauseatingly polite Here you go. You must have missed this.
His reply came in seconds later. I didn’t miss it. You didn’t send it before.
I bit the inside of my cheek. If I didn’t have proof, I might believe him that I hadn’t done it. That I remembered wrong. Thank God for Sent Mail history.
As people trickled in for the day, some of them waving as they passed my open office door, and others engrossed in their phones, I had zero focus.
Get it under control, me. I have work to do.
At 8:24, Chase knocked on my door. “Any idea what this is about?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Interesting. Let’s go find out.” He gestured toward the Bullpen.
Chase was Sadie’s older brother, and by proxy as good as my stepbrother—the sexy kind of stepbrother, people wrote romance novels about. If I hadn’t basically grown up in their house, I’d let myself pay more attention to how attractive he was. Dark hair, the same pale-blue eyes Sadie had, and the perfect amount of muscle in his arms to dip a girl and kiss her.
I might be fooling everyone else, but I couldn’t lie to myself. I knew exactly how sexy Chase was, and unlike with Luke, I didn’t pretend the fantasies didn’t exist. I’d been daydreaming about Chase longer than I understood what the pulsing need between my thighs meant, when I thought about him kissing me.
And now last night with Luke was back in my head, overlapping my Chase repository like a scorching double exposure.
I gently tucked it all aside and fell into step beside Chase. He worked in Sales, not Development, but he was part of our team because he’d sold merchandising rights to several companies, for the game we were currently behind on. He had as much of a stake in the game hitting market as any of us did.
We took a spot near the front of the area we called Bullpen. It was an empty space amid the cubicles, near the windows, where we would set up gaming parties, pizza days, or whatever required a little extra space.
Including stand-up meetings.
