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I don’t let too much excitement bubble up, though. I know how things usually go for me.
* * *
Today’smy first day in the office. The elevator takes me to the floor I’d met Emery on for my interview. Christine sees me exit the elevators and smiles, waving me over to her desk.
“Happy first day!” she exclaims.
I do my best to fake smile back. “Thank you. Do you know where I’ll be working?”
She nods, standing and locking her computer. She’s gorgeous. Blonde hair is pinned up and she’s in a similar suit set like I’m wearing, but hers fits her thin frame a little better than mine does. She has tattoos sneaking down the wrist of her half sleeve shirt, they run down to her hands, too.
On anyone else, I’d think they were too much, but not on Christine. They only enhance the shining beauty she already has that threatens to blind anyone who gets too close.
“Oh, Mr. Stanner wanted me to have you come and get some paperwork Suzanne sent over for you. She’s out sick today.”
I nod as I follow her toward the office where I’d felt my first tingles of life only three days ago when our hands connected. My good talking to at Human Resources about company policy flicks through my brain, however, and puts the kibosh on the things possibly going anywhere.
She opens the door and motions for me to enter before her.
“Oh, Mr. Stanner, I didn’t see you come in yet. You snuck right past me,” she says, moving toward the desk to get the paperwork.
I freeze near the door. I’m caught in a stare so powerful; I can feel my body fighting against it as the moments pass.
His dark blonde hair is expertly maintained, the slightest waves from where he’s combed it back can be seen. His jaw is so sharp that my fingers itch to run across it and feel its hardness. Full lips part as his tongue slips out and licks them. My eyes follow the gesture, flicking back up to his green orbs that are filled with something dangerous.
I press my thighs together —because let’s face it, they’re always touching.
“Leave us,” he tells Christine, and she fumbles for what to do with the paperwork in her hands. He stands, tugging it from her and dropping it onto his desk, glaring at her as she moves out of the room. When she passes me, she gives me a look of apprehension, as if this never happens.
Great.
“So, you weren’t going to tell me you knew me?” he asks, his ironclad jaw twitching as he tightens and releases it a few times.
It feels as if his presence standing before me leeches the air from within my lungs. I can’t seem to find enough oxygen to breathe, let alone speak.
“That’s my fault,” Conner says from behind me, sauntering in casually with his hands in his pockets. He’s chewing a toothpick in his mouth, something I haven’t seen a man do since my grandfather.
“How so?” he asks him, as I silently thank God for sending me Conner this morning.
After watching his tongue slip across his lips, there was no fucking way I could speak to Emery. Not coherently.
“I told her you wouldn’t remember her, and you didn’t, did you?” Conner asks him cockily.
Conner and I both know the only reason he recalls me is an event so staining neither one of us should reference it. He flicks his gaze at mine, as he no doubt thinks the same. He leans over Emery’s desk, grabbing up the paperwork Suzanne left for me, and walks back toward me.
Emery’s eyes bore into mine as his jaw still ticks with annoyance.
“Come on, Carina. I’ll show you to your office,” Conner says, walking past me. I turn on my heels, hastily exiting the room and taking the first full breath in the last five minutes.
Stay away from him. You know he’s trouble. They both are.
CHAPTERFOUR
Anonymous
Dickhead detective is repping it out on some fancy chest machine as he grunts and ruts like a fucking pig. He keeps looking over at her house, as if he hopes she’s watching him. Or maybe it’s something he’s noticed my girl doing, I wonder. I watched them the other night, standing on her porch, touching and staring at one another like teenagers. I’d damn near lost myself and rushed them both. He’s the reason I have to be careful. He’s the reason I’m close to killing. I heard her agree to a date with him. I know that if I’m not ready to show myself, I can’t say shit, but it doesn’t sting any less to watch her with someone else.
In between every set he does on machines or free weights, he looks over toward her house to see if he can catch her watching him. When I look back up from where I stand, perched behind an electric pole, there she is, peeking through the blinds. He smirks as he looks down, playing it off as if her being there didn’t stroke his ego like he’s one of her fucking cats.
