Chapter 30
JAXON
Slightly hungover from my afternoon with my mother yesterday, I walked into the office fully geared for a fight. Over the years, I’d had a couple of offers from other airlines, but I liked where I was.
If they made me start over at a different company, I would, but I wasn’t just taking this bullshit termination crap lying down. I was finally at the point here where I pretty much got to choose my routes, had more downtime between flights, and could theoretically be home more often if I chose to do it.
The airline was affiliated with one of the charities I volunteered at, and they were even counting my hours there now as actual work. It had taken me a long time to get to this stage of my career, and I wasn’t just leaving.
A young brunette girl greeted me in the waiting area of the office number she’d told me to report to. She sat with her back toward the runways, and her eyes widened as if she was in shock to see me there.
“Are you Mr. Scott?” she asked when I walked in. I was wearing my full uniform and had my hat tucked under my arm for good measure. It was time to remind them of who I was and that they’d be firing a pilot they’d courted for years if they went through with this.
I nodded once. “Yes. Ms. Bowman, correct? You summoned me?”
Her head bounced up and down, but there was definite tension in her movements. “We just need to discuss with you what has happened. Then you’ll be on your way. Today’s meeting shouldn’t take too long. If disciplinary steps follow, I’ll be in touch about the procedure from here on.”
Delightful. “Sure. Can I go in?”
“In a minute. They’re just finishing up a conference call about the strike.” She flushed like she knew she wasn’t supposed to have mentioned it and then cleared her throat. “It’ll just be a minute. Please have a seat. I’ll let you know as soon as she’s ready for you.”
“Guess I’ll wait some more.” I planted my ass on the seat closest to the door marked only with the airline logo, and I tapped out a text to Kavan, canceling the plans we’d had later this morning. Shira wanted me to help with painting a rainbow on the baby’s wall. Instead of being there helping them prepare for their new arrival, I was here trying to reason with a department that was clearly in disarray.
My knee bounced while I sat there, my mind half still stuck in Fiji as it had been since I’d gotten back, and half going over the job offers I’d had before. One would require moving to New York, but at this stage, that didn’t seem as bad as it used to. Except for the fact that Mom would never move and she’d have my diaper-cleaned balls as payment if I tried going without her. But there was one in Dallas as well. She might go for that one if push came to shove.
A few minutes later, the receptionist cleared her throat again.
“Please follow me, Mr. Scott.” She smoothed out her skirt after she stood, giving a terse nod in the direction of a short hallway behind her desk.
I followed her to an opaque glass door at the end, my heart slamming into overdrive when I read the name on the door. There was no mistaking it, though.
In big, bold, capital letters, there was Lindsay’s name.
Ms. Lindsay M. Flinn.
Oh shit. Also, I wonder what the M stands for?
I had literally no time to think about how to handle facing her again. Her assistant rapped her knuckles against the glass and pushed the door open without even waiting for a reply.
“You can go in,” she said without making any move herself. “I’ll be at my desk if you need anything. Ms. Flinn will take it from here.”
I’ll just bet she will.
Lindsay rose behind her desk when I walked in, her hand stretching out ahead of her like she was about to shake mine, but then she lifted her eyes away from her computer and saw it was me. Her hand froze in midair before dropping back to her side.
I gave her a smile, but her eyes turned to steel as she glared at me like I’d never been glared at before. “Oh, joy. It’s you.”
Clearly, she was just as surprised to see me as I was to see her. “Hey, Linds. You never told me we worked for the same company.”
“I didn’t know.”
I cocked my head, still clutching my hat underneath my arm. “You didn’t think to ask who I flew for when I told you I was a pilot?”
“We only ever talked about our current positions our first day there.” Her eyes spat fire at me while her voice was as cold as a fucking glacier. “Forgive me for not taking more of an interest in the employer of the man who, shortly after asking me what I did for a living, told me I hadn’t cared about my fiancé.”
“Come on, Linds. It wasn’t—”
Her expression turned thunderous. Eyes narrowing into slits, her nostrils flared and she held up a hand to interrupt me. “Don’t call me that. Don’t you even begin to think about speaking to me like we’re still on that island.”
She marched out from behind her desk, but instead of coming to me, she walked around—giving me a wide berth—and slammed her door. I didn’t want to make her madder than she already was, but I was genuinely confused.
“Why are you yelling at me?”
She spun to face me from the door, eyes still blazing as she planted her hands on her hips. “Who the fuck do you think you are, leaving me alone in that hotel room? I’m not some worthless slut you fucked on your way into or out of some country, and even those women aren’t worthless.”
Her chest heaved, but she wasn’t done yet. This was a side of her I hadn’t seen before, but I couldn’t deny that I liked it. Even when her fury was aimed directly at me, she was fucking hot.
Angry sex hadn’t really been my thing before, but looking at her now, I would definitely be okay with it. Not that I thought it was about to happen.
“Did you even think for one fucking minute what it would do to me to wake up alone after a night like that?” she asked. “Not even just a night. A whole fucking week. A week where you pretended to be this good, supportive guy when you were really nothing but a bottom-feeding scum leaching off a vulnerable woman’s emotions?”
Her words hit me like an arrow to the heart. “You know that’s not what it was. I thought it would be best for both of us not to say goodbye. We had a pretty fucking awesome night, and it felt right to leave it with that as our final moment.”
She’d walked back behind her desk and slammed her palms down on the glass top. “Right for who? Best for who? Not for me. That’s for fucking sure.”
With the amount of F-bombs we were both dropping, it was no surprise that the tension between us was thick enough to cut with a blunt knife. That same electricity from before zapped between us, but this Lindsay, the one with the hair tied up into a firm, sleek bun and wearing a navy dress like it was body armor, showed none of the signs that had become familiar to me that she felt it too.
I showed her my palms after tossing my hat down on the chair I was supposed to have taken. “We need to talk. I’m starting to get that maybe I made a mistake, but this really isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
The only place it would get us was with her bent over her desk and her skirt bunched around her waist. If that was what it took, I wasn’t opposed to using our emotions against both of us.
She stared at me with her blue eyes wide. “It wasn’t going to get us anywhere for you to leave either, asshole. But I get it. You got what you wanted, so you left.”
Disbelief clouded my vision and scrambled my thoughts. “You were the one who said you didn’t want to say goodbye, Ms. Flinn.” I emphasized her name because she’d told me not to treat her like we were back in Fiji. “I gave you what you wanted. Let’s just be clear about that.”
“What I wanted?” She was practically shouting now, her body wound tight as the knot my earphones got into in my pocket. “None of this was what I wanted, Jaxon. It was never about what I wanted.”
I stiffened from head to toe, my own lids lowering until I was staring out of slits. “Can I just say, for the recor
d, that you were complicit in everything? Consulted in everything. Don’t make it sound like I forced any of it on you, Lindsay. That’s beneath you.”
“Beneath me?” Wildness crept into her eyes as she jerked upright. “You know what was beneath me four fucking nights ago, Jaxon? You. Do you know what was there when I woke up? No one. Nothing. Not even a single fucking rose petal.”
“I took care of it before I left.” Admittedly, there were better things I could have said.
She let out an incredulous laugh. “That was so kind of you. I’m sure the staff thanked you immensely for your dedication to helping them when you had to have picked up each petal by hand and they could’ve vacuumed it all up after we left.”
“It felt important to do it by myself.” I stalked up to her, my eyes never leaving hers as I planted my face right in front of her. “I did it for you, Lindsay. Do you hear me? I stayed up, I cleaned up, and it was all for you.”
“None of it was for me.” She shoved me away from her and dropped into her chair, flicking a finger at the one with my hat on it. “Do you want to have this meeting? Or are you going to sign my forms, agreeing to mutual separation of employment, and get the fuck out of my life?”
I grinned but even I knew it didn’t reach my eyes. “I’m not signing shit, baby. I made it easy for you to get rid of me once, and look where that’s gotten me. Apparently, it was the wrong thing to have done then, and it sure as hell is the wrong thing for me to do now, so I suppose you’re stuck with me.”
“Stuck with you?” she hissed out between clenched teeth. “No. I’m not stuck with you. I’m done with you.”
“What happened to our meeting?” I challenged her, not willing to walk away again until she asked me to in so many words. “I thought this was about my termination, not my actions taken in my personal capacity on my time off.”
“Your time off? You didn’t have any time off, Jaxon. If you think I’m going to do fucking shit for you to try to save your job, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” I picked up my hat and leveled a stare at her. “But this is far from over, Lindsay.”
“Get out,” she ordered between shallow, panting breaths, her eyes still shooting daggers at me. The dark blue depths I’d admired so many times were black. “Get the fuck out of my office and don’t bother saying goodbye. You had your chance to do that, and you missed it.”
Chapter 31
LINDSAY
Jaxon’s golden gaze locked on mine, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. I could practically hear the thoughts screaming in his head, but he didn’t voice them. He thought I was overreacting. Perhaps that I was being unfair.
Maybe I was.
If any other person had walked through my doors, I wouldn’t have been treating them like this. I definitely wouldn’t be throwing them out of my office before we’d even gotten to the purpose of the actual meeting.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn’t any other person. He was the guy who had walked out on me just days ago. The guy who had been instrumental in showing me new heights—and I wasn’t just talking about parasailing—and then left me lower than I’d ever been.
I couldn’t treat him like I would anyone else. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
The proper thing to do would’ve been to kick his case to a colleague and let them deal with him. If I was capable of rational thought while being pinned by those eyes, I’d have handed over his file and been done with it.
As it always did when I was anywhere near Jaxon though, my brain was malfunctioning. No matter what he’d done to me, that humming electricity was still present between us. Especially when neither one of us was willing to look away.
A long minute, or maybe more, passed before he thrust his chin up, shook his head, and turned on his heels. There was a distinct frustration in the sharp, almost robotic movements of his body, but that wasn’t my problem.
I knew he’d seen how hurt I was while he looked at me. There was no way I’d have been able to hide it from him when he stared at me like he was peering right into my heart, and he still hadn’t said anything. Still hadn’t acknowledged it in any way.
Gripping the door handle so hard his fingers turned white, he paused for a second without turning back to me. His shoulders rose like he’d sucked in a deep breath, and when they fell, he twisted the handle and strode out of my office with his spine rigid.
I brought my fist to my mouth, and my eyes narrowed as I let out a silent scream. The door slammed shut behind him, and just like that, Jaxon was gone again.
The fresh, masculine scent of him permeated the air like he’d left it behind on purpose to be a painful reminder of all the times I’d breathed him in. The very oxygen I was breathing was now tainted by him.
Asshole.
My heart was going crazy, my blood pounding in my ears. I felt like I’d been hit with a battering ram in the stomach, and my arms shook when I wrapped them around my torso. I knew I wasn’t literally about to fall apart, but I still felt the need to hold myself together.
I have to calm down.
I’d never gotten this upset in the office, and I wasn’t about to start now.
A soft click when my door opened sent my pulse into a frenzy again, only to hit rock bottom when Anna walked in.
Stop it, body. We didn’t want it to be Jaxon anyway. Stop reacting like we’re disappointed it’s not.
I turned to face the window to hide the expression I was undoubtedly wearing, but it was too late. The sound of Anna’s heels clicking against the tiles stopped abruptly, and there was a brief awkward pause.
“Lindsay? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?” Alarm rang out in her tone. “Let me alert security. Hang on a second.”
Before she could leave, I swiped my fingers under my eyes and shook my head. “No. That won’t be necessary. It’s not what you think. There’s no need to get security involved.”
My voice was strained, but at least I’d stopped her from calling in even more people to witness my emotional wobble. I cleared my throat and walked back to my desk slowly, moving like I was in physical pain.
“Did you need something?”
Confusion and uncertainty flashed in her eyes before she shook her head. “No, uh, I just wanted to find out if you wanted to do the progress report for his manager. We can do it later.”
Fuck.
I’d forgotten all about that. “There’s nothing to report at this time. I’ll have to investigate further and update them when I’m done.”
Her brow creased. “I’ve been looking at the manual, and it says that after every meeting, we have to—”
“I know what the manual says,” I snapped at her. “I wrote it. I just need some time.”
Once again, a tsunami of guilt slammed into me and I softened my features. “I’m sorry, Anna. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I’m just… it’s a personal matter. I’m going out for lunch early. When I come back, we’ll get into the rest of the day.”
I hadn’t been planning on going out, but now I couldn’t stay in here for another minute. I needed fresh air—air that didn’t still have his presence lingering in it. Gathering up my things, I stood up and slung my purse over my shoulder.
“I’ll see you in an hour or so.” I managed a small smile before giving her a curt nod of my head, leaving her standing in the middle of my office.
On my way out of the building, I fished my phone out of my purse and texted Ember. My friend lived for early, long lunches and she somehow always made it work.
Before I even reached the parking lot, she replied with a string of grinning emojis and sent me the name of a restaurant I hadn’t been to before. I didn’t really care where I met her, though. I just needed to get out and she was the only person I wanted to see.
Thirty minutes later, I walked into a modern bistro with a few rustic elements blended in here and there. The atmosphere was lively and friendly, and when I saw Ember waving at me from the patio, I already felt the tension
bleeding out of me.
I was here. I was fine. I’d come face to face with Jaxon after he’d left me there naked and vulnerable, and I’d come out the other side with my dignity mostly intact.
My friend’s smile disappeared when I got closer to the table, her eyes narrowing to slits as her gaze flitted over me. Already on her feet when I stopped in front of her, she pulled me into a bone-crushing hug.
“Work or Jaxon?” she asked once we were both seated.
“Both.” I took the carafe of wine she’d ordered, filled a glass with the tangy white, and took a giant gulp. I’d need a mint and some perfume before I went back to the office, but as long as I didn’t turn up wasted, I wasn’t breaking any rules.
Ember’s nose twitched. “What do you mean ‘both’?”
“I mean Jaxon came into work today. My work, which also happens to be his place of work.” I took another mouthful of wine while her eyes went wide, nodding as her rapid blinking told me she was getting it. “Yep. In a cruel twist of fate, it turns out that he’s a pilot for my airline.”
For once, my friend was so shocked that she was speechless but it didn’t last long. “How did you not know that?”
“We didn’t really talk about work, much more than asking what the other did for a living on our first day. When he said he was a pilot, I guess I just assumed he didn’t fly commercially. He sure as hell doesn’t look like the rest of our pilots.”
“He never asked where you worked?”
I shook my head. “I told him I was a senior consultant in human resources and the conversation went in a totally different direction after that. In fact, he made a comment about my relationship with Will a few minutes later and I blew up at him.”
“It never came up again?” she asked, eyes still wide. “How?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, even though she was right. I felt like a total idiot for not having asked him about it again. “I think maybe because the conversation about our careers ended the way it did? Jaxon promised he wouldn’t ask about Will or say anything about my relationship with him again. That promise was the only reason I agreed to spend more time with him. We steered so far clear of that subject that I think, even if it was subconsciously, the job thing just ended up in the same category.”
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