The What If Guy

by Lauren Blakely

  A mirthless laugh is her answer. “I had no idea you were buying our site. Media finance? ‘I’m in media finance,’” she says, imitating me.

  “I could say the same of you. ‘I run a lifestyle site,’” I parrot back.

  Her eyes widen. “Well, I do run a lifestyle site.”

  “I know, I know. It’s ironic. We purposefully decided not to discuss work, and it turns out maybe we should have.”

  She arches one brow. “Should we have though? Do you actually wish we’d discovered this last night?”

  Damn. Talk about forward. This is why I dig Bryn—she doesn’t play around. She speaks her mind.

  It’s a valid question that she’s asked.

  Do I wish I’d known?

  If I knew, we might not have continued the date. And I don’t know that last night should be erased from our personal history.

  “You’re right. I suppose I’m glad I didn’t know who you were. Plausible deniability is a good thing.”

  “A very good thing in this case.”

  “Anyway, now that we are talking about the elephant in the room, yes, I am in media finance. Synchronicity Media is a media portfolio firm, and we buy websites and other media properties that we think will have synergy.”

  “Synergy,” she says, with a laugh and a too-cute eye roll.

  “Hey, now. What’s wrong with synergy?”

  She adopts a more serious expression and formal tone. “Hey, Bob. Let’s dive into the transparency of all the synergies in our business systems.” She returns to her own voice. “‘Synergy’ is just sooo corporate.”

  “Sometimes I have to be sooo corporate.” I give it back to her but add a smile.

  “Fine, be all corporate,” she says, and there’s that pals tone again, but it’s laced with a little flirtiness that I don’t want to let go of.

  “I will be all corporate,” I say, trying to rein in a smile.

  Dammit. I don’t want to give up a second chance with her.

  She leans back in her chair, letting it spin a few inches, then she sighs. “What are the chances the guy I met in a cute little collectible shop would be my new CEO?”

  The realist in me answers. “More than average, actually. I’d been meeting with Hadley before I popped into the store. Meeting with her to finalize some terms.”

  “And now the sale is final.” It comes out a little heavily.

  I drag a hand through my hair. “Look, even though I’m glad I didn’t know you work here, since it gave us the chance to have last night, and I don’t and won’t regret the most epic date and most epic sex of my life”—I stop to register the curve in her lips, the glint in her eyes—“I’m also surprised I didn’t put two and two together. I read a ton of articles on the site beforehand. I bought the site because I thought the content was great and the traffic and ad numbers are insane. But I don’t recall reading an article from a Bryn. It’s kind of a memorable name.”

  She offers a faint smile. “Maybe you remember the byline of Elizabeth Hawthorne?”

  The light bulb flicks on, and I groan. “Are you kidding me?”

  “That’s me.”

  I laugh, but it’s borderline humorless. “I remember that name now. I enjoyed her articles, especially the one calling for the eradication of dick pics.”

  She pumps a fist. “That article worked. Yay! You sent me a pussy shot instead.”

  “See? I can be trained. Though, confession time, I have never sent a dick pic to anyone. Also, you’re the first woman to receive a kitty shot.”

  She brings her hand to her chest. “I am the luckiest gal in New York. Because Queen LT is awesome, and I do want more pics of her. Anyway, Bryn is my middle name, though I’ve always gone by it. I use Elizabeth as my byline because I didn’t want an easily traceable name when writing about dating. Elizabeth is easier. A broader name. But I don’t write that often for the site.”

  “Because you’re in charge of all the content,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “And now you’re in charge of all the site,” she says, also laying out the cold, hard facts.

  “Yeah.” Another sigh. Another wish that she weren’t off-limits.

  “Which means . . .” She stops, waving her hand like she’s saying goodbye. “I won’t be seeing you on Friday night.”

  13

  Logan

  I scrub a hand across my chin, wishing I could find a way around this problem. That’s what I do—find alternative paths to a solution. But I don’t see a route to Bryn. An appropriate one anyway. Reluctantly, I agree. “Friday night does seem to be out of the question now.”

  She gives a sad smile. “Too bad. It was fun while it lasted.” She peers at the clock on her wall. “For less than twenty-four hours.”

  I scoff. “Hey, now. Don’t count us short. We should start the clock from that first fateful moment in the shop on the corner when we met. So, we had the moment in the store, then we talked online, then we went to Gin Joint, then we had last night, then we texted and talked this morning.”

  “Whoa. We’ve had an entire modern relationship in three days.”

  “Exactly. And my records say . . .” I make a show of looking at my watch. “It was right about ten fifteen on a Friday morning when we locked eyes.”

  “Then that means it was fun for three days and one epic night.”

  I need to stop, but I don’t pump the brakes just yet. “One absolutely epic night that I very much wanted to do again.” I linger on those words like I’d wanted to linger on her this Friday. I hold her gaze, driven to speak the truth. If I can’t have her, at least I can have a touch of the honesty we shared, the honesty I’d missed those last few years of my marriage.

  “Listen, Bryn. You need to know I wanted to see you for more than the sex. Maybe that sounds crazy, since we only spent one night together. But I really liked talking to you. I liked how we were together. I liked how it felt to be with you.”

  “I liked all that too, Logan. A lot,” she says, soft and breathy, dipping into that submissive zone she likes to inhabit in the bedroom.

  That connection between us, the intense attraction, sparks up again. I lower my voice even more, my eyes full of intent. “And I also loved fucking you.”

  She shivers, biting the corner of her lip. Oh, hell. That’s the woman I had on the couch last night. That’s the woman who wants me to do bad things to her.

  “I loved it too,” she says softly. “I had a few things I was hoping we could try on Friday.” There’s a touch of coyness in her tone that gets the attention of my dick.

  Well, in that organ’s defense, my dick was already sitting up just from being near her.

  And that’s why I should cut this conversation off at the knees. I should be the cool, composed businessman.

  And yet . . . I don’t want to.

  “I’m pretty sure I’d have loved doing all those things to you.”

  She picks up a pen, twirls it, and shoots me a flirty stare from across her desk. “How do you know you’d have loved it?”

  I lean forward, elbows on my thighs. “Because you and I like to fuck the same way.”

  Twirl goes the pen. Dark go her eyes. She kicks her heel back and forth, and I don’t resist staring at her legs for a few seconds. “Inappropriate” is my new middle name.

  “We do. We did,” she says, emphasis on the past tense. “And it’s a damn shame, Logan. Because sleeping with my new boss would be a terrible, terrible decision.”

  Maybe it’s the two “terribles.”

  Perhaps it’s the naughty glimmer in her eyes.

  Or it could be that a part of me was dormant for a decade. Whatever the reason, I don’t stop the flirty, dirty tease with Bryn. I inch closer. Her desk is between us—a barrier that’ll keep me out of trouble. “It would be completely terrible,” I say in a tone that makes it clear that sex with her would be the opposite.

  “Absolutely awful,” she says, punctuating those words with sensuality, like she’s murmuring l
ace or satin.

  “The worst thing ever.”

  All I want to do is walk around the desk, bend down, and park my hands on the arms of her chair. Kiss her till she melts under me. Till her back bows and she’s grabbing at my shirt, begging me to put her on her desk and take her.

  I lick my lips, marching full speed into danger. “The only worse idea would be lifting you up on that desk right now.”

  Her eyes flicker with flames. Her voice is laced with invitation. “What would you do with me there?”

  Fuck appropriate for a few more seconds. Just fuck it hard. “Hike up your skirt. Pin your hands behind you. Pull your hair nice and tight.”

  “And then?” Her breath comes faster.

  I lean closer to her desk, parking my elbow on it. I run my finger along the empty rim of her mug, the Obi-Wan wine one, my gaze never straying from hers. “Give it to you the way you want.”

  “And what way is that?” Her eyes stay locked with mine, and I swear sex and desire are written in her irises. They’re teased on her lips. They’re in the flush of the skin on her chest, that patch of softness above the buttons on her blouse. So soft and tempting, and I want to dip my face and kiss and touch and lick.

  I stare at her lush lips then her gorgeous eyes. “I bet you’d want me to take you hard, wrap your legs so damn tight around me. Put my hand on your mouth to cover your moans. Pull your hair and jerk your head back. Fuck you till you bite my hand because it feels so damn good when I’m inside you, owning you.”

  A dangerous sound slips from her lips, a needy gasp. She lets her eyes flutter closed, presses her teeth against her lips, then breathes out, words catching on her breath. “Own me. Yes, own me.”

  “God, I want to, Bryn. I want to so much.”

  “Me too.”

  She lifts her hand languidly, brings it to the exposed skin of her chest, then lets it trail down her flesh, almost as if she can’t help herself, like she can’t resist touching her own body right here in front of me. “Do you like that, Logan?”

  I stare shamelessly, my skin on fire. “I do. So fucking much,” I say, and my body heats up to center-of-the-earth levels.

  I’m not a stupid man, and I know this is beyond dangerous.

  But technically, we’re not doing anything.

  We’re simply talking.

  Fine, we’re talking insanely dirty.

  Okay, I’ll admit it. We’re having sex with words.

  We might as well be screwing.

  And I need to shut this down, once and for all.

  I drag a hand over my face. I must steer this ship back into the appropriate harbor. I built my business on trust, strategy, and doing the right thing. Not on sleeping with my employees. “I need to get it together. I can’t come into your office and have these conversations with you, as much as I want to. This is my fault, and I need to do better.”

  I stand, shaking out my hands like I can erase this insane desire for her. Just get it out of my system. Rid myself of it, then bury it underground, hide it forever, and forget it ever existed.

  She blinks, straightens her spine, and runs a hand over her hair. “You’re right. That was too risqué. That was inappropriate,” she agrees crisply.

  I pace in the small square footage of her office, trying to center myself and my shrinking willpower. “I need to think about something else. Anything.” I gesture to the kitschy glasses on the wall. “Like that. I like those glasses. They make me feel like I just traveled across the middle of the country, blasting some rock music, listening to Journey or Bruce Springsteen, and stopping at some old-fashioned truck stop.”

  There. That’s safer. Easier.

  Bryn picks up the thread easily. “Where the waitresses wear pastel-pink or mint-green diner uniforms and have names like Flo and Mabel.”

  “And they call everyone ‘hon,’” I say. “Or ‘doll.’”

  She grins like I’m speaking her special language. “Yes. And the menus are bigger than a blackboard. You feel like you’ve slipped back in time. It’s summer, and you barely have a care in the world.”

  I can picture it clearly. That wasn’t my life growing up, but it’s a world I can conjure from images I devoured of road trips and classic American journeys. “I love the way that old-time nostalgic feel of a road trip was portrayed in movies.”

  “I loved the way it was for real.” The wistful tone in her voice surprises me. But the words surprise me more. For real.

  I tilt my head, curious. “Yeah? Did you collect all of these yourself?”

  “Yes, but those are ones I snagged recently. When I was younger, my mom and I used to go on long road trips. Every single summer as a teenager. We’d visit one-horse towns and pull over at rest stops, the kind with vintage signs—vintage because they hadn’t been updated in years. The diners would have shops with these souvenir glasses. We picked up a bunch but lost most of them over the years. So I replenished them recently.”

  This intrigues me. All of this. Every detail. I gesture to the Georgia one, the outline of the state in orange, a winking peach on the glass. “Can I touch?”

  “Of course.”

  I pick it up and study it. “So, what took you on so many road trips with your mom?”

  “It’s pretty exciting. Are you sure you can handle it?”

  “Sure. Try me,” I say, smiling, charmed by this insight into Bryn.

  She clears her throat and adopts a serious expression. “She was an insurance adjuster. We traveled a lot during the summer on her jobs. She turned them all into road trips—so she’d go visit homes that had damage claims from tornados or what have you, and then we’d continue on and make a trip of it. Sometimes we went to ballparks, since she loved baseball and I do too. We saw minor league games and major league games. And we visited all the off-the-beaten-path sites. We collected stuff from everywhere.”

  “Did you enjoy the trips?”

  “Best times I ever had. We’d find all the quirky, absurd little things in a small town. All the things you have to see. Or maybe we’d research a ghost town and go out of our way to visit it. Or the world’s biggest ball of yarn. Or a neon mini-golf course. We’d travel to all these places, take pictures, grab a bite. My job was to write stories about them.”

  “Like travel pieces?” I ask. Their travels sound delightful, and it delights me even more to imagine a young Bryn on these quirky adventures.

  “Yes, I was a travel blogger before it was cool,” she says. “I did it on my own. Just for fun.”

  “Is that what brought you into this world?” I gesture broadly to her office, including the door to indicate the offices beyond. “Writing, content creation, editorial?”

  She swipes some strands of her brown hair off her shoulder. “I think so. I’ve just always done it. I created all sorts of stories about where we went, packaged them up with photos, made websites and blogs for them. That’s where it started—road tripping. We had a blast, chronicling our summer adventures and picking up all these vintage keepsakes from the side of the road. And then later, when I was older and Mom retired, we went scavenging for kitsch together at sales and stuff. We still went on road trips, but we were always on the hunt for little tchotchkes. She loved Snoopy, hence my overpowering drive to snag the Snoopy lunch box.”

  Bryn only talks of her mother in the past tense. Gently, I ask, “Did she pass away, Bryn?”

  “Yes.”

  There’s a hitch in her voice, a sheen in her eyes, and I have no choice but to comfort her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I say, then I cross the distance, wrap my arms around her, and hold her in a gentle embrace.

  It’s not sexual. It’s just a hug. But as she settles against me, drawing a breath then letting go, it sure feels like she needs this right now.

  And I can give that to her.

  For a few brief seconds, it occurs to me that it’s far too early to do this. We hardly know each other. But it feels wrong not to comfort her.

  “Thanks,” she says, her voice a
little wobbly as she answers, separating from me. “She died two years ago. She had . . . pneumonia of all things. Healthy as a proverbial horse all of her days. Even two summers ago, we were still road-tripping, picking up souvenirs, telling stories. She got sick in a little town in Pennsylvania. We were swinging by this collectible shop that had a signed lithograph of Snoopy battling the Red Baron, but we never made it there. She was coughing so badly, and we thought it was allergies, but it turned out it was more.” She waves a hand like she can shoo away the sadness, then she grabs a picture of a woman who looks like her, just older, and shows it to me. “This is her on our last summer trip, when we got acos.”

  I regard the shot of Bryn’s mom smiling wryly under a roadside sign. “That’s a great picture. But how were the acos? As good as tacos?”

  “They were delish.” She sets down the photo. “Anyway, that was very sweet of you to give me a hug.”

  I narrow my eyes, growling. “Don’t let the badass persona and tough-as-nails personality fool you. I’m a softie underneath. I kind of have to be—I’m raising a little girl.”

  “Funny, Logan, but I never thought you were tough as nails,” she teases.

  “Hey, now. I’m super manly.”

  “You’re manly in the ways I like and sweet in the other ways.”

  Gently, I run a hand down her arm. “I’m sorry about your mom. I’m glad you were close to her though. It sounds like you guys had a great relationship.”

  “We did. She was so sarcastic; we got along like thieves. She’s the one who hooked me on those retro housewives.” She brings a finger to her lips. “Oh, wait, shhh. You can’t know about those, since you’ve never been to my home.”

  I go along with the ruse. “I have no idea what you’re like at all. I don’t know anything about your cat or your shower or your desires.”

  “And I don’t know a thing about you. Except you’re a softie. Hey.” She parks a hand on her hip, indignant. “What’s your daughter like?”

  I smile—it’s easy to do when someone asks about Amelia. “Want to see a picture?”

  “Um, yeah.” She wiggles her fingers, a show me now command.