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“Okay.” I wouldn’t stop. Ever. But that was a battle for another day.
I just eyed her as she swanned across the apartment on a mission. She did look healthy, but I knew better than to judge her appearance to determine that.
When we got to the kitchen, I saw an empty counter. Bristol had put away everything I’d pulled out of the fridge and done something with the pan. I glanced over at her, and she winked.
How had I ever left her behind? She was truly the best. My partner. The love of my life.
Eighteen
Axel
“Don’t you have other team stuff to do? Something to promote me? Maybe find out who the hell is smearing my name?” I grumbled as I sat in the back of the SUV beside Marta. Despite what I’d told Bristol, my assistant showed up in the morning to take me to the fundraiser. In a chauffeured vehicle no less. As if I couldn’t drive myself.
The whole thing was bullshit. I rolled my eyes and stared out the window at the passing landscape, all the places I’d haunted as a teenager. I missed my hometown.
“All I have to do is you,” she replied, and the way she saiddo youput me even more on edge. Not in my lifetime, she wouldn’t be. “Boss’ orders.”
Her hand landed on my arm, and I jerked away.
“Don’t.I’myour boss.”
“You’re the ‘boss’,” she said with snarky air quotes. “Unless Darius intercedes, which he has. When he gives me an order, I follow it—something you’d do well to implement into your own behavior.”
Was she seriously telling me what to do now and commenting on how I acted? Come Monday morning, I was getting a new assistant, no matter what. Period. I wasn’t sure how it would go down since she was my uncle’s golden girl, but her speaking to me as if she were my boss, rather than the other way around, was out of line. Again. Add to it the subtle way she’d started hitting on me, and I was done. Finished.
I wasn’t letting her screw up things with Bristol, and I certainly wasn’t letting her drag me through the mud, which was where I was sure this was headed when I told her to fuck the hell off. She being possessive and weird.
I sank into silence, keeping my focus solely out the window.
“You should have worn a different shirt,” she said, fussing over me. Again, I jerked my arm away when she fingered my sleeve.
“Don’t touch me,” I growled loud enough for the driver to hear.
“I’m just saying, you should have worn something with your sponsors’ logos on it—at least Marksum, your top sponsor.”
“It’s a casual appearance. I’m not wearing my fire suit.” It was the only thing with all my sponsors’ names emblazoned on it. “This is fine.”
“I thought you went back inside the apartment to change,” she chided.
No…I’d pretended to forget something, so I could go back inside to Bristol without an audience. I’d made Marta wait in the SUV while I said goodbye to my girl and kissed the fuck out of her, so she knew I planned to come home with her later.
“I’ll see you later. Promise,” I’d told her for good measure. “I’ll try to come see you down at the book fair, if I can.”
Bristol had pulled me back to her and kissed me again. Minutes later, when I’d returned to the vehicle, there was no way Marta didn’t know what I’d been up to.
Now, I silently watched my town pass by. Cherish Cove was just the same as it had always been. Shops that had been there for a century and handed down through generations were a reminder of the past I’d left behind, the familiar I’d enjoyed and now I missed. Though some buildings had changed names and business type, everything looked near identical to what I remembered, thanks to town ordinances dictating the look they were required to maintain.
My lips pursed, and I rolled my eyes as the driver, who was from the city, turned the wrong way for the school because he was relying on the GPS. Neither he nor Marta wanted to listen to me when I started to tell them the thing would take them to a cornfield. It was a giant laugh in town since according to the electronic mapping it was supposed to be the elementary school. Over the years, there had been plenty ofChildren of the Cornmentions.
“What are you doing?” Marta demanded, when the driver stopped at a dead end, with the winter remnants of corn stalks straight ahead of us.
“Making us late because neither of you would listen to me,” I muttered under my breath, still staring out the window.
“It’s not funny,” she snapped.
“Hey, I tried to tell you, but why would you listen to the guy who lived here most of his life?”
“Axel,” Marta said, her voice an annoying whine. What the hell was up with her? She’d never been like this in the years she’d worked for me. The past few months, though, it was as if she’d been switched with a doppelganger who wanted to get into my bed.
