Page 5 of You've Always Been Mine

“Oomph.” I run into a solid form. I stumble back, dropping my phone.

“Sorry about that.” I watch a head of thick blond hair dip down as the man I ran into kneels to pick up my phone. When he stands, I take in his expensive suit and handsome face and realize I recognize him.

Austin Vaughn is an attorney at one of the firms that routinely use our lab services for their cases. He’s incredibly good-looking with a chiseled jawline and strong brow. He’s around my age and is always friendly when we interact for business. He’s also suave, and regularly asks me to go out with him. Not in a creepy, pushy way. More like a persistent, confident way. Like he knows one day I’ll say yes, he just needs to have the patience to wait.

Austin stands and holds out my phone. “You dropped this.”

“Thank you.” I slip the device into my purse and look at the dark green folders tucked under his arm. “Are those for me?”

“Yes. I was hoping to catch you before you left for the weekend.” He shoots me a cheeky grin. “Any chance I can still give these to you?”

I sigh.

“Sure.” I turn and start to unlock the door. I can’t take legal documents out of the laboratory. I’ll have to turn off the alarm and go back to my office to store them until Monday. This will add five minutes to my drive at least.

“Hold on.”

I pause and look over my shoulder at Austin. “What is it?”

“It’s late,” he says, looking over my shoulder at the dark lab. “You’ve already locked up. I’ll just come back on Monday to drop these off.”

“No, it’s okay. You’re already here.”

He shakes his head and takes a step back. “It’s Friday night. You have somewhere to be. I shouldn’t keep you.”

I frown. “But you’re already here,” I repeat. “I’d hate for you to waste your time by coming back Monday when I can just take the files now.”

Despite my logic, Austin continues to step back toward the parking lot where only four cars are parked. I don’t have to guess that the fancy black luxury car belongs to him. “Sorry. No can do. Have a good weekend. I’ll see you Monday.”

I shake my head at his retreat but can’t help but smile. “I’ll owe you.”

He stops. “Really?”

I nod. “I’m running late for a family dinner. So, yeah. I owe you.”

“Here’s an idea. Make it up to me by finally agreeing to join me for dinner.”

Of course, that’s what he’d ask for.

An amused smile continues to tug on my lips. “We work together.”

“We work adjacent to one another,” he counters. “And last I checked, neither of our jobs have rules against dating people who we work adjacent to.”

“I’m too busy to date.”

“I asked for dinner, not to be your boyfriend. Not yet, anyway.” He ends his flirtatious remark with a wink.

It’s on the tip of my tongue to turn him down. I don’t like to mix work with my personal life, and the truth is Austin’s firm is one of our laboratory’s biggest clients. The work they provide gives us the extra funding we need to accept quarterly pro-bono cases for the local defense attorneys. The appointed legal teams have access to publicly funded labs to test the evidence in their cases, but sometimes there are new technologies or analyses that can look at the evidence in a new light and provide more details to be used in their cases.

I don’t want something as silly as a bad dinner date to sour the working relationship between me and Austin. I’m about to say as much when he asks, “Or are you already seeing someone? Is that the problem?”

A head of wavy brown hair and piercing blue eyes fills my head… haunting me just like they have for most of my life.

This is ridiculous.

After all this time, you’d think I’d come to terms with my unrequited feelings for my childhood best friend. Derek Lawson and I were once thick as thieves, but life happened. Until a year and a half ago, I’d given up all hope of us ever being together. Part of me wishes that’d been true. Because what happened at Avery Lawson’s wedding, more specifically what happened after, was by far worse than never being together in the first place.

Determination suddenly floods me. I don’t want to be the pitiful hometown girl pining after the bigshot tech genius whoused to be her best friend—who could have been so much more if things had ended differently back on that Caribbean island…

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