Once Upon A Grump, page 8
“It’s not my place to criticize your fiancé. That’s all.”
“Former fiancé,” she corrected. “And I’m surprised you believe anything falls outside the realm of ‘your place.’”
It took almost everything I had, but I didn’t ask. I didn’t ask any more questions because I could feel how the air had shifted between us. Lola may have been a pain in my ass, but she was too sweet to hold a grudge. I saw that now. If I so much as gave her the slightest opening, she’d give me all her trust and acceptance. She’d forgive all my asshole behavior until now. She’d open up to me and be as friendly as she was to everyone else.
I couldn’t afford that. I wouldn’t be able to resist her if that happened. And if I couldn’t resist Lola, I’d be one step closer to what the board of directors wanted. I’d get distracted, the performance of the company would shift, and in a few months, I’d be following in the footsteps of my brothers.
I took a deep breath, and then stood, putting as much of my weight on my good ankle as I could.
“Hey,” Lola said, rushing to her feet and taking my shoulder in her hands. I saw her eyes flick to where she was touching me and then back to my ankle. “That wasn’t fifteen minutes.”
“I can rest at home.”
“That’s really your home?” she asked. “The top floor of a corporate building? I mean, no offense,” she said with a playful grin. “But wouldn’t you be happier with a normal house? Fairhope is an adorable little town. You’d love it if you ever left this tower.”
“Don’t pretend to know what I’d love,” I snapped.
I’d been prepared for her to look pissed, but I wasn’t ready for the hurt I saw on her face. It nearly fucking broke me. “I was just–”
“You were just overstepping yourself,” I forced. I needed to swallow the damn pill and close whatever door we’d just started to open.
I would’ve felt better if she’d shouted out some biting comment as I hobbled out of the exercise area, but she said nothing. I knew the look on her face was going to keep floating into my mind’s eye, and I wished I’d just kept my fucking mouth shut and not asked questions.
That would be the last time I let her see anything other than Mr. Stone. It had to be the last time.
14
LOLA
I knew it was a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I could tell Termite wasn’t herself this morning and the idea of leaving her home alone while she was sick was too much. I also knew I couldn’t afford to call out of work–not with Mr. Stone as my boss. He’d never explicitly said so, but I suspected he would hold it against me if I had the nerve to get sick and call out.
So I did the stupid thing and brought my biggest bag with Termite stuffed inside. Last week, Cassie had shown me the gorgeous grass patio bar on the twentieth floor. Alcohol wasn’t served during work hours, but employees could get free sodas and a surprisingly awesome assortment of healthy smoothies to enjoy. There were cushy outdoor couches and cute little swinging benches that gave a breathtaking view of the Rockies and the little town of Fairhope.
I’d put in some “face time” as Mr. Stone called it with my co-workers when I came in and made an excuse at the first opportunity to sneak to the twentieth floor with my oversized bag and poor sick dog. Cassie and Paisley spotted me trying to discreetly head for the elevator and followed me.
“Where are we going?” Paisley whispered.
Cassie was eating some sort of dried snack that smelled foul. “Yeah, I just got an email saying I need to double check the accounting figures for last quarter and have a full report to Griffin before I leave today.” She rolled her eyes and gestured like she was holding a gun to her head. “I’m currently looking for any excuse to pretend I haven’t seen the email yet.”
I waited until the elevator doors were closed and the three of us were alone to open my bag and show them Termite. Both women “aww”ed and leaned over to scratch her head, but Termite barely responded.
“She’s not feeling well today, and I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving her alone. I’m going to let her try to potty on the twentieth floor.”
Cassie laughed and popped another piece of food in her mouth. “Girl. You are either brave or stupid. Do you know what Mr. Stone would do if he found out you snuck your dog to work?”
Paisley looked grim. “She’s right. Maybe you could make an excuse to run home real quick and take her back. Seriously, if he finds out, it’s going to be bad.”
“What does he care?” I asked. “It’s not like she’s running around causing distractions or destroying things. She just wants to be with her mommy,” I said, reaching in to give her a scratch behind her ears. Termite looked up at me with big, sad eyes as if begging me not to take their advice.
“Well,” Cassie said. “I’m getting one of those super green smoothies to sip while I watch you dare the devil himself.”
I made a noise. “You two build him up too much. He’s just a man. A grumpy one, yeah, but I don’t think he’s as scary as he wants you to think.”
Paisley tilted her head. “Last week, you told us that he barely speaks to you. What changed to make you two so familiar? Are you fucking?” she whispered.
The doors opened and I used it as an excuse to stall for an answer. I walked out and let them follow me through the glass mezzanine and out to the balcony. “No,” I said finally. “Nothing like that. We have just talked a little. I got the sense there’s a big difference between the real him and the version he wants people to see.”
“Hmm,” Paisley said. “You know I dated this guy in college who was an absolute slob. He drank expired milk, treated his living room like a hamper, and he was always drinking and getting high instead of going to class. But, he was super-hot and rode a motorcycle, so I convinced myself he was worth fixing. I thought I could teach him to be civilized and then I’d be the proud girlfriend of the perfect guy everybody else had missed.”
I gave her a look as I lifted Termite gently out of my bag and set her down. Like a good girl, she squatted to pee and looked up at me for approval immediately. I scratched under her chin and told her she was a good girl. “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re telling me this because you think that’s what I’m trying to do with Mr. Stone. But you guys both don’t get it. I’m not interested in him like that. Hell, I’m not interested in him. Period.”
“You know what happened with the guy?” Paisley asked, ignoring me. “He pretended to change just long enough to get in my pants. Once he got bored, he went right back to being exactly who he was.”
I sighed. “I get the point. Don’t think I can change him, because even if he pretends to change it’ll just be so he can use me.”
“No,” Paisley said with a smirk. “The point is that you can enjoy getting banged by him while he’s on his best behavior and get back to your life when he gets bored of playing nice.”
Cassie laughed. “You’re so bad, Paisley.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “I’m pretty sure if I let Mr. Stone ‘bang’ me, I’d wind up with a case of frostbite in my vagina.”
They both laughed.
“I hate to break it to you,” Paisley said. “But I would bet my life that he would leave you in a sweaty pile of orgasmic bliss. There would be no frostbite involved.”
I shook my head, collecting Termite and giving the woman working the bar an apologetic smile. She winked at me and mimed zipping her lips.
“Well,” Cassie said. “I need that fucking smoothie. These dried tilapia chips taste like death.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Paisley said. “But they smell like it, too.”
Cassie gave her the finger and headed for the bar.
I took a look around the patio while we waited and spotted a glistening black orb just above the door. A camera.
Maybe I should’ve felt a pang of fear, but instead I just felt insolent at the thought he might be watching. I looked up at the camera, put on my best smile, and waved.
A few seconds later, my phone chimed from a new email.
15
CHRISTIAN
Lola came into my office a few minutes after I emailed her. Yes, I was watching the cameras again. Yes, I was pissed at my lack of control. But I’d reasoned that keeping an eye on her kept me from feeling so uncontrollably tempted to drag her up to my office and interrogate her every fucking day.
But this morning I’d watched her bring her bag to the twentieth floor, let out some little dog, and then have the nerve to wave at the camera with a smile. She’d known I was watching, and once again, I found myself doing exactly what I shouldn’t.
She was wearing a black and white dress made out of thin, silky fabric. The sun streaming through the windows behind me cut straight through the material and showed the outline of her thighs and hips behind it. I shifted in my seat, trying to remember what the fuck I’d been planning to say when I called her up here.
“This has to stop,” I said once she was seated.
“You stalking me through the cameras all over the building? Good. I was thinking the same thing.”
I clenched my jaw. Her insolent comebacks had a disconcerting way of making me want to take a fistful of her hair and kiss her mouth until she remembered who was her fucking boss.
Not for the first time, I wondered if this was how it happened with my brothers. Did they try this hard to fight their feelings for employees, or did they roll over and give into temptation? Hector had fallen for his secretary, Candice. He walked away from the company so they could pursue a relationship and he sold all of his shares when he left.
Then there was Lance. He had always been more rash and impulsive. He’d started fucking a girl from HR at work. She convinced him to grant her access to confidential company files, and she used the information to extort money from people until she was eventually caught and thrown in jail, along with Lance. He’d sold off his shares when he found out he was going behind bars, which meant my brothers had handed majority control of our own company to a board of directors voted in by our shareholders.
In short, they’d fucked me in more ways than one.
I could just imagine how happy it would make Trisha if I followed in the footsteps of my brothers.
“Well?” Lola asked. “Did you just call me up here to glare at me? Because as fun as this is, I am supposed to be upstairs with Max in a few minutes.”
Despite her attitude, I had to admit Lola had already proven to be one of the few who could handle my niece. Max hardly even complained about Lola or her lessons. In fact, I was beginning to suspect my niece actually liked the woman.
“You brought your dog to my office.”
“Yes,” Lola said. “Termite is not feeling well, and I figured if my grumpy boss had his pick between me staying home to watch her or bringing her to work, he’d choose having me here.”
Annoyingly, she was correct. “Your grumpy boss needs you to ask his permission for this sort of thing.”
She smiled sweetly. “Grumpy boss, may I please bring my poor, sick dog to work today so she’s not home alone and scared without her mommy?”
I gripped the armrest of my chair tight enough to make the leather groan. “Yes, you may.”
Lola started to stand, and I just couldn’t help myself.
“But,” I said, causing her to freeze with her big bag over her shoulder. “If you pull a stunt like this again, I will fire you.”
She didn’t move at first, almost as if she was internally debating with herself over whether she should say something. Finally, she turned toward me with fire in her eyes. “You know, if you threaten to do something enough times without doing it, the threat starts to lose its punch. So either fire me, or stop claiming you’re going to do it. Asshole.”
I stared as she walked out of my view. I would’ve never let anyone else talk to me that way. Not a living soul. But there I was, watching her go and feeling only a throbbing sense of need. I wanted to have my hands on her so badly it was fucking blinding. I wanted to taste her so much that my already shitty sleep was even more elusive.
Lola Thorn was unraveling me, one thread at a time.
I briefly considered hitting one of the bars in Fairhope for the first time and trying to pick up a quick one-night stand. Maybe I just needed to scratch the itch. But I felt no desire or temptation by the thought. It wasn’t meaningless sex I wanted. I wanted to fuck Lola Thorn, and I was the world’s biggest idiot for letting things get this far.
I decided this was the last time I would watch the cameras. This only ended one of two ways. Either I learned to control myself and stop thinking about her every hour of the day, or I fucked her brains out and got her out of my system. The latter would probably mean losing my company and the former would only require a little discipline. I knew what I needed to do, even if I wasn’t going to like it.
16
LOLA
After my last run-in with Mr. Stone, he was surprisingly distant. I even wound up talking to Chase in the office for at least half an hour because he was venting about his visiting aunt who chain smoked in the house no matter how many times he told her to stop. I kept expecting Paisley or Cassie to butt in and tell me I was being summoned by the king of all grumps, but the summons never came. A very, very small part of me was disappointed.
But I started to enjoy my independence from him. I came to work every day, organized his itinerary by assigning certain tasks to various individuals in the office and setting some aside to handle myself. Mr. Stone had given me virtually no feedback on whether he was happy with my performance these last three weeks, but I was going to assume silence was a good thing.
I was getting to know everyone in the office from the gossipy but surprisingly competent triplets to the square-jawed supervisor named Griff who played in three different amateur softball leagues after work nearly every day. Getting to know everyone helped me figure out which tasks to send to who, and if the feedback was any indication, my personal touch was making everyone in the office happy.
Everything seemed to be shaping out for the best. I’d started getting drinks with Paisley and Cassie after work a few nights a week, I was slowly but surely tackling the terrible smell of the combined Tinkerbells in my apartment, and I’d begun exploring the town of Fairhope in my time off. It all should’ve made me feel like I had a new home and could put New York behind me.
But then I’d see all the missed calls on my phone. I’d see the unread texts from my ex-fiancé and his parents and my former friends. I knew I couldn’t turn a blind eye forever, and I also knew I was never going to truly feel like I fit in here as long as I was running from my past.
New York taught me that the seemingly perfect life could come crashing down with one little choice–that people I thought I knew could reveal themselves to be unrecognizable overnight. It was hard not to wonder if the same thing was going to happen here. No matter how close to perfect this was shaping up to be, how did I know it would last? How the hell did I know I wasn’t the problem? That eventually I’d screw this up somehow and wind up running again.
My thoughts were a mess all morning, so when it was time to go up for Max’s daily lessons, I formed a somewhat reckless plan. We both needed to get out of Stone Tower and the never too-distant sense that Mr. Stone was watching from somewhere, glaring in disapproval.
Max popped up from the couch when I came into the penthouse. She never exactly smiled at the sight of me. She was too cool for that. But I had gotten to know her enough to understand that tossing her phone aside at the sight of me was a very good sign.
“Hey,” I said easily, keeping my bag over my shoulder and waiting by the elevator.
Max’s eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong? Are you going to give me a pop quiz again or something? Because I still don’t forgive you for that.”
“I was thinking we could both really use a pedicure.”
Her eyes went so narrow they were almost closed. “But we’d have to leave the tower for that. Uncle Stones says–”
“I know what he says, but what is it going to hurt? We’ll put a baseball hat on you and sunglasses. Nobody will ever recognize you.”
She hesitated, but I saw her eyes fall to her nails. She looked back up. “I do like pissing off Uncle Stones, but he really put his foot down about leaving the tower. He won’t tell me why it’s such a big deal, but…” She chewed her lip. I’d never seen Max look particularly torn about doing something bad, and I felt my own resolution to be reckless start to slip.
“We will be super careful, Max. I promise. We both need this, and if we get caught, I’ll take all the blame. Okay?”
She said nothing for a few seconds, then suddenly jumped up and hugged me with a small, girlish squeal. “Okay! Let me go get a hat.”
I smiled as I watched her hurry off. Max carefully curated a mask of disinterested teenage girl whenever she could, but I’d come to personally love the moments when the mask slipped. Underneath the feigned disinterest was a sweet little girl who just wanted a normal life. If I could give her even a little taste of it, then it was worth the risk. Although I couldn’t help thinking it would’ve been much more logical to wait another week for this until after I’d earned my first twenty-thousand-dollar bonus.
Max and I headed out of the building separately to draw less suspicion. I went first and then waited in the parking lot for her to follow two minutes after. When she got in my car, she balled her fists and let out another excited squeal. A split second later, she had arranged her face into a perfect illusion of disinterest. “Alright, whatever,” she said in a flat tone. “I guess we should get going.”
I grinned. “Yeah, whatever.”
Max punched my arm softly, and I didn’t miss the hint of her smirk in my rearview.
