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But Brooke was still at her desk. Usually, when she stayed late, she played music, and today was no different. I didn’t know the band, but it was upbeat.
“Hey,” I said, walking to the front of her desk. “Ready to work on those reports and numbers?”
“Yep!” She looked up at me with that smile of hers. “I’ll be in your office in a second.”
I went back to my office, making sure my hair was in its proper place. I pulled up the necessary information on my computer and pulled a chair around so she could see my screen properly. I kept enough distance between my seat and hers without making it obvious that I needed some extra space.
She came in after five minutes with her notepad. “You want me to sit next to you?”
“Sure, so you can see the screen without craning your neck.” The back of my own neck got hot. I could have turned the screen so she could be on the opposite side of my desk.
“Good idea.” She sat down. The seat’s wheels made her roll closer to me, anyway. That floral perfume of hers. I still had no idea what it was called, but I wanted to buy her a lifetime supply of it. She never wore too much of it, but that was part of the problem. I always yearned to catch the scent of it mixed with her natural feminine smell, and I had to get close to her to do so.
I dove right into the work, going over spreadsheets and graphs. I loved working with them—which was the reason why Lucas and Hunter left them to me—and Brooke did, too. Why did I even like that about her?
At some point, we hit a good stopping point.
“See, we got so much done, and we’ll have time for more things tomorrow,” Brooke said, stretching her arms up. The motion made her dress stretch tight across her breasts, so I looked down. But then I got a glimpse of her thick thighs, and I looked back to my computer screen.
“You were right.” I stretched, too. “I’ll be less stressed tomorrow.”
“That’s the best part.” She studied my face, her green eyes warm and curious. “You hold a lot of tension in your shoulders.”
I consciously relaxed my shoulders, the corner of my mouth quirking up. “I didn’t realize it was so obvious.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you out on it.” She pushed her glasses up higher on her nose. “I just want to make your life easier, so seeing you stressed makes me a bit stressed.”
“You don’t need to worry that much about me,” I said. It sounded like she genuinely cared about me beyond work. She was that good of a person. For a moment, a pang of jealousy hit me. I wasn’t jealous of Hunter and Lucas in a bad way, but more of in a sense that I wanted the emotional freedom to take a risk on someone like Brooke.
Logically, I understood that she was nothing like Stephanie. Stephanie was smart and kind, but those qualities didn’t seem to reach her core the way it did with Brooke. And Brooke wasn’t afraid to ask me about how I was feeling, something that Stephanie rarely did.
So what was stopping me from pursuing her, besides myself?
My two best friends.
But we all knew that we each had feelings for Brooke. And they were good with sharing her, as was I.
So it was all on me, to my relief. That meant I had all the power to change it.
“You okay?” she asked. “You went somewhere else for a bit.”
“Hm?” I blinked. “Yeah, sorry. I tend to get into my own head a lot.”
“It’s okay. You don’t need to apologize,” she said. Her smile turned wry. “I used to get in trouble for it a lot when I was younger. I’d zone out thinking about a book or a movie, and my parents would always get mad.”
“What? Why?” I asked. “Kids do that all the time.”
“My parents are complicated.” She shrugged. The word ‘complicated’ had a lot of weight, and I didn’t want to push her about it. But she continued. “They never neglected me or anything and even helped me get a scholarship to my high school, but they weren’t very nice to me otherwise. I understand that parents need to discipline their kids, but it always felt like I was a bother to them.”
“That’s terrible.” I hated her parents, and I didn’t even know them. How could they make their child feel like that?
“I know. We don’t really speak anymore, besides an awkward conversation here and there at Christmas and Thanksgiving.” She shrugged as if it wasn’t that big of a deal, but she had to have been hurting. I put a hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed, despite knowing I shouldn’t have. “But I’ve been seeking out my own family. Like my cousin Cody, way out in New York, saved my ass after my ex dumped me. And I have my roommate Jamie, who always has my back. And I have you three.”
I let my hand skim down her back a few inches. “The three of us? Don’t you mean Hunter and Lucas, since you’re involved?”
She looked up at me through her lashes, sending a bolt of lust down to my cock. “I know. But that doesn’t mean my feelings end with them. Hunter and Lucas know.”
Her words sucked the air out of my lungs. Was she more or less saying that she wanted me, too? We looked into each other’s eyes for a few moments, the air between us still.
