Turned out I wasn’t the only Lind sister who’d gotten kissed on the way home by a Reach executive.
“More like I kissed him,” Audrey said dreamily.
“You kissed my boss?” Jesus, I hadn’t even gotten my coat hung up before she’d attacked me with this information, let alone gotten a chance to tell her anything about my car ride with Donovan.
She pulled her knees under her on the couch. “Dylan is not actually your boss. He’s more like your boss’s equal, if you want to be technical.”
I threw my coat on the back of the sofa next to her along with my purse. Forget making it to a hanger; it wasn’t happening. With my hands free, I put a fist on my hip. “If you want to be technical, he’s old enough to be your father.”
She rolled her eyes. “He is not. He’s just experienced and wise.”
“He’s twenty years older than you.”
“Maybe I have a thing for dads. Don’t knock my kink. I don’t knock yours.”
That shut me up for a second. I hadn’t actually ever told her my kink, but Audrey wasn’t stupid. She could probably figure out enough to guess that I at least liked a good spanking.
“Fine.” I dropped my hand. “I won’t knock the age difference.” I circled around to the front of the couch and plopped down next to her. “I don’t actually care what you’re into anyway, as long as it’s consensual.” It was the truth, too. I wasn’t just blowing sunshine up her ass. “I just don’t want you getting hurt. Dylan doesn’t seem into relationships. You get that, right? Not to mention that you live on entirely different continents.”
“It was just a kiss! God,” she huffed, shifting so her legs were out in front of her. “I’m not planning to marry the guy.”
“Just a kiss.” I sounded skeptical only because, with Audrey, it was never just a kiss. The minute she decided she liked a guy, she liked a guy. She started doodling their initials on the back of napkins. She changed her Facebook status to In a Relationship. She gave her heart when she swapped saliva. She didn’t do one-night stands. She didn’t do casual hook-ups. She didn’t do just a kiss.
Audrey sighed up at me with doe eyes. “I felt bad for the guy. All that doom and gloom. ‘Love’s dead. Grump, grump.’ He needed something nice for a change.”
Uh huh. “So you thought you’d kiss him and that would show him. Make him magically believe in hearts and romance again?”
“Shut up,” she said with a pout.
That’s what I was afraid of. Just a kiss and now she was head over heels for Dylan-love-is-a-myth-Locke. Thank God she was leaving in six days. And he was leaving. She might not even get a chance to see him again.
Audrey sank further into the couch beside me. “You think I’m naïve.”
I looked over at my baby sister, ready to tell her all my worries, but stopped myself at the last second. I couldn’t tell her to change how she felt any more than she could tell me to change how I feel about Donovan.
And she’d never try to tell me to change how I feel in the first place. She’d just encourage me to feel it.
So instead I kissed her hair. “I think you’re amazing.”
She peered up at me and grinned. It had been the right thing to say. Score a sister point for me.
She nudged me with her shoulder. “Hey. Tell me what happened with Donovan. He wasn’t on a date with that woman, was he?” She said it with certainty, as if she had an inside scoop.
“He said he wasn’t.” I threw my feet up on the coffee table in front of us. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “The way he looked at you.” She followed me with her feet on the table too. “What else?”
“He said he came back to the States for me.”
“To talk to you? To be with you?”
“That’s what I don’t know yet. We have more to talk about, obviously.” I pulled a lock of hair down and twirled it between my fingers, replaying everything he’d said. There was so much I wanted to remember. So much I wanted to obsess over and hold too preciously.
“He said he loved me,” I said softly. Well, he hadn’t actually said it. I’d said it, and he’d confirmed. Was that the same thing? I was counting it as the same thing.
“Wow. That’s big.” Her excitement was hard to contain, but she was doing a pretty good job being cool about it. For me, I guessed. Probably trying to figure out how I felt about it before she let loose her own enthusiasm.
I nodded. It was big. But…
“But you already knew that he loved you,” Audrey said, filling in the blank that I couldn’t.
“Yeah. I did.” That was the problem. Everything he’d said had only confirmed things I’d already suspected were true. I wasn’t any closer to a solution where he was concerned. And it was going to be another several days before we got a chance to make any more progress.
“Still,” Audrey said, “it had to be nice to hear.”
I had a list of arguments why nice didn’t matter. Then I remembered that I should just feel it.
“Yeah,” I said, genuinely. “It’s really nice.”
I’d heard Donovan tell Dylan he’d be in the office the next day, I just hadn’t really thought about it until it was the next day. Suddenly I was nervous and anxious and totally unprepared. All night I’d tossed and turned, and that was believing there were several more nights before I’d see him again. Now that there was a possibility I’d see him sooner, I was going out of my mind.
I settled on the simplest game plan—I’d hide.
My office was nowhere near Donovan’s and since I was taking Wednesday off to spend with Audrey, I had a lot of work to keep me busy anyway. I just had to stay on task, holed up in my little corner, and everything would be good.
The plan worked well for the most part. By late afternoon, I’d gotten all my must-complete projects done and had gone the whole day without leaving my office.
All I had left to do was drop off some forms that needed to be signed off on. Forms that couldn’t be emailed because they contained client payment information.
I walked down to the edge of the hall and glanced toward Donovan’s office. It was dark, which should have made me feel relieved. And it did. Mostly. I didn’t even know if he’d actually made it in like he said he’d planned to. Now I wouldn’t know at all because I’d been too chicken to look for him.
I was seriously ridiculous.
I wanted to see him; I didn’t want to see him. It was confusing even to me.
Anyway, Weston’s office was in the opposite direction and it didn’t matter if Donovan was in or not.
So I headed toward Weston’s.
Halfway there, I passed the glass-walled conference room and realized it wasn’t empty. Weston, Nate, and Dylan were sitting around the far end of the long table. And standing behind them, as though he might have just walked in and hadn’t sat yet, was Donovan.
As soon as I saw them, I snapped my head away, back to the hallway in front of me. They hadn’t seen me. They were wrapped up in their conversation. I didn’t need to interrupt them.
God, my stomach was fluttering like a teenager’s. Just because Donovan was nearby. I didn’t want to see him, but I wanted him to see me. My face was flushed, and I couldn’t think and—