“He what? I’m going to have to talk to my husband about this,” she said as she pulled up her phone. “It was an accident, right?”
I swallowed hard before fessing up to my own sins of the situation. “The first bit. The second one not so much.” I held up a finger to stop her. “I’d like to point out I restrained myself from pouring the entire thing over his head.”
Her lip twitched. “Too tall, huh?”
“Yesss,” I groaned. “Being short really sucks sometimes.”
She laughed and set her phone down. “I know Thane has worked for James for years. Possibly his most trusted employee. After all, when we had Bailey, he asked Thane to take over the reins while he took paternity leave, and again with Oliver. At times, Thane has practically run the company for months with James’s guidance.”
I’d never really thought about that. “Wow. I was still pretty new when Oliver was born and was trying to impress my boss, so I wasn’t worried about who was doing James’s job.”
“You’re not getting along with Thane?”
I shook my head. “I want to strangle him, Lizzie.”
She chuckled next to me as she picked up Oliver’s bottle, which had rolled over for what was probably the umpteenth time. “With a certain part of your anatomy?” she asked with a quirk of her brow.
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, he is very easy on the eyes. Speaking of eyes…” Thane had the most alluring blue eyes I’d ever seen.
“What about them?”
“Every time our eyes meet, I get stuck, like I’m hypnotized by them. They are the most beautiful bluish-green. The man should not be so good looking and have those eyes, because then I’m just done.”
“You do like him,” she said with a smirk. “You know, I once read this article that said seventy percent of relationships start in the workplace. Which I can see. That’s how I met James, after all.”
Ha! Like that would ever happen.
“No, just no. I hate him,” I corrected her. I knew the story of how Lizzie and James worked together at an investment company before he struck out on his own, taking her with him. They were equals, and completely different than me and Thane.
She just smiled at me. I couldn’t even convince myself. “You just want to have sex with him, then?”
I let out a sigh and looked over to Kinsey. She and Oliver were happily playing with the toys on the floor, and thankfully they were sharing without incident. “I can’t have more than that.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you can! Just because you have her doesn’t mean anything.”
“She is instant guy repellent. I tried to go on a date, and he took one look at her when I opened the door and was out. Guys come up to me at the grocery and see her, and suddenly they’re gone. My last relationship completely disintegrated because of her.”
“And you even got your nipples pierced for him.”
I rolled my eyes. “It was a stupid reason. I never would have done it otherwise, but I’m glad I did it.” Lizzie had gone with me for moral support and held my hand. She was about to burst with Oliver at the time, and said she wanted some measure of the pain James was going to feel in a few weeks when she was in labor.
Weeks later she called him a wuss when he complained she was breaking his hand.
“Do you think Thane would like them?” she asked.
Heat rose in my face and I stared down at the sparkles in the granite counter. “I don’t care what the Assholian thinks.”
“Assholian? Is that what you’re calling him? I like it.”
“What do I do?” I needed some help, because I was at a loss.
“You want my advice?”
I nodded. “Give it to me.”
As sweet as Lizzie was, she could also be brutally honest. And no matter how much I didn’t want it, I needed her to tell me everything I knew but didn’t want to admit.
“Fuck him. Literally. It’s obvious you two have some wild chemistry going by what you’ve said, and I think you need to explore that. If you still hate him after that, move on and be happy for a good time. But you can’t keep using Kinsey as a shield or an excuse. There are men out there that aren’t afraid of being with a woman who has kids. All those guys were boys, including that shit of an ex.”
“I just…” She was right. I did use Kinsey as an excuse, but at the same time, my life had been completely turned upside down in an instant. My only constant was work. That was the last place I could find any speck of original Roe.
“Kinsey is lucky to have you. The sacrifices you’ve made for her are incredible. You chose her, so make sure you find a man who chooses you both. Until then, a little office romp sounds like fun.”
Maybe she was right about one thing—there was someone out there who would want both me and Kinsey.
The problem was, I knew it wasn’t Thane.
His assistant put her baby before him, and the obvious disdain he had told me children weren’t his thing.
If he couldn’t accept his assistant putting her child first, there was no way he’d be able to accept me putting Kinsey’s needs first.
The entire weekend passed with me trying to work off the energy vibrating through me. I had to stop myself from looking up Roe’s information in HR’s database to find out where she lived so I could fuck it all out on her.
I was completely unhinged. In all the years, all the women I’d dated, none had hit me so hard. There hadn’t been a steady woman in my life in years. Not that I was a commitment-phobe by any means, but there just was not a connection strong enough to make it past a night or two.
But Roe…
She was distracting me from my job, my routine.
There was so much strength and wit in her, but there was something else. That something else drove my curiosity mad and kept me thinking about her more than I should have been. Something she hid, kept from conversation by omission. The short lunches, leaving early, and her sometimes ruffled appearance.
She didn’t have a boyfriend, according to James, who only laughed when I asked. When I got defensive, shooting off how beautiful she was and why the fuck wouldn’t she have one, James only laughed harder.
I needed to find better friends.
Because he knew her secret.
It was there in his words, in his warnings, and in that stupid laughter. Jealousy rose in me, hating that he knew her in ways I didn’t.
Jealousy. Why was I feeling that emotion?
What the fuck did I have to be jealous about?
Maybe getting to know her better would quench that, and only time could change it. And maybe a date. Maybe then she’d open up to me.
Then open her thighs.
Fuck.
I knew I wasn’t the only one feeling the intense attraction. It made me say and do things I would otherwise never do in the workplace.
Those were two things I had always kept separate until my eyes met hers.
All of these thoughts and feelings were unnerving to me.
I arrived at the office at my usual few minutes before eight and she, of course, wasn’t there. Tardiness annoyed me almost as much as her refusal to answer the phone correctly. The trains moved on a tight schedule, and every few minutes. Why was it so hard to get out a few minutes earlier?