Making her feel.
Harlow stilled in an instant. Connor caught up on a three-second delay, stilling along with her, then pulling his chin back to look at her, and holy shit, was she insane? Of all the rules she could break, fraternizing with a co-worker—at work, no less!—was the worst. Technically, it wasn’t against the rules. But the implications, not to mention the complications, had the potential to become a wrecking ball to her carefully crafted career. On a contract where she could not afford missteps.
And she knew better.
“Harlow?” Connor asked quietly, and God, the look of concern etched on his face took her even further out of her depth. Going toe to toe with him, she could handle. But this? It was too much.
“I apologize,” she said with as much crisp formality as she could muster for someone who had been inches away from riding her co-director like a Kentucky Derby racehorse. Connor took a backward step at the words, giving her literal and figurative room to breathe.
“For what?” he asked.
Was he kidding? “Kissing you was”—hot. So hot. So. Very. Hot—“wrong,” Harlow breathed, and great. She was really selling it. She cleared her throat. “It was wrong and impulsive, and I shouldn’t have done it. I apologize.”
Connor shook his head. “Okay, so it was a little impulsive, yeah, but—”
“No buts,” she said, because really, she had to lock up her feelings and get back to what was important. Immediately, if not sooner. “It was an error in judgment on my part.”
“You think it was a mistake?” Emotion flickered through his stare, a combination of disbelief and something a whole lot darker and sexier, but Harlow nodded.
She had to.
“I do. If we could just forget it happened, I think that would be best.”
For a second, she thought he’d argue. They did, after all, excel at it, and he looked primed and ready to press the issue.
But then, Connor took another step back, his expression utterly blank as he nodded.
“Fine by me,” he said.
And then he walked out of the office.
Connor was ninety percent sure he was an idiot. Two days had passed since the kiss he’d shared with Harlow in the office clinic, and even though he’d replayed the whole thing over in his head no less than a thousand times, he still couldn’t quite figure out what the hell had happened. One minute, they’d been arguing like usual, and the next, they’d been caught up in a kiss so sexy and intense, it had bordered on a religious experience.
Christ, that kiss. There hadn’t been words to explain the feeling that had expanded in his chest when Harlow had let loose on him, her emotions tumbling out of her in waves. Her irritation, he’d grown accustomed to. Her stubbornness, too. But when those blue eyes had glittered with desire, her hot, heart-shaped mouth forming the words, “you drive me crazy,” he’d felt it everywhere, and he’d wanted nothing more than to yank her dress up, her panties down, and show her a whole new definition of crazy.
Right up until she’d frozen. In hindsight, it had probably been good that one of them had come to their senses, and with how mindless she’d been making him, with those greedy sighs and that needful mouth—yeah. It sure as hell wasn’t going to have been him. But as clearly consensual as the kiss had been, it was equally clear that she regretted initiating it in hindsight, and damn it, the thought was sitting on him like a two-ton boulder.
Harlow had said kissing him was wrong, but it hadn’t felt wrong.
It had felt perfect.
And that was driving him crazier than anything she’d done or said since she’d first summoned him from the ED two weeks ago.
“Connor? Hey! What are you…whoa.” Charlie’s footsteps clapped to a halt about three strides into the ED lounge, where Connor had parked his big, indecisive ass. Thankfully, Parker, who was right behind his fiancée, was spot-on in the reflexes department, and managed to stop without crashing into her.
“Hey, man,” Parker said, his dark brows tugging downward in concern. “You’re here awfully early. You hanging out with us in the ED this morning?”
Connor nodded. No sense in pretending it wasn’t zero-five-fifty when the big ol’ clock on the wall was right there, reminding them. “Not really hanging out. I was just…” Well, shit. “Hiding, I guess.”
Parker and Charlie exchanged a glance that was lightning fast and loaded with meaning. Wordlessly, Charlie moved over to the coffeepot and started to pour, while Parker sat down in the chair next to the edge of the couch, where Connor had grown roots.
“Feel like elaborating?” Parker asked, and Connor considered his options. He could slap on a smile and make a joke about wanting a breather from his workload at the clinic, and his friends probably wouldn’t push. The thing was, he wasn’t sure he wanted to say no. Whenever he’d gotten jammed up over something in the past, he’d always used his friends as a sounding board. Granted, the whole I-kissed-my-co-director-and-I-liked-it thing was a bit higher on the WTF scale than Connor’s norm. But he couldn’t deny that his friends were his family, and when he needed to air shit out, they were always there.
Still, he had to proceed with at least a little decorum. Harlow had said she wanted to forget the kiss entirely, which meant she’d probably strangle him for forking over the details to his friends. Plus, he’d never really been the type to kiss and tell, and the kiss was really just the cherry on top of the whole maddening situation, anyway.
“Harlow and I are, um. Having trouble getting into a groove of working together,” Connor said.
Charlie surprised him with a laugh. “That sounds about right.”
“It does?”
“Yeah, dude.” Parker took the cup of coffee Charlie handed over with a smile and a murmur of thanks, nodding at her as she sat next to Connor on the couch. “I know it’s not quite the same because you and Harlow aren’t involved outside of work, but it took me and Charlie a while to figure things out, too. You two are working long, crazy hours all up in each other’s space, and putting the clinic to rights isn’t exactly a low-stress objective. The fact that you and Harlow are butting heads while you get adjusted isn’t really that shocking.”
Connor skipped around the whole involved-outside-of-work thing. He and Harlow had only kissed once, and he doubted there would be a repeat, but still… “I’m not sure we are getting adjusted. I figured we’d have some growing pains,” he said. “But it’s been two weeks, and all we do is argue.”
“Okay, you guys do seem to have pretty different personalities,” Charlie mused. “You both want the same thing, though. Is there really no room for common ground?”
“No. I don’t know.” Connor jammed a hand through his hair. Ugh, this whole thing was so fucking frustrating. “Sometimes it feels like there might be, but just when I think we’ll finally make some headway, one of us does or says something that sets the other one off, and then we’re right back to being enemies.”
Charlie’s red-gold brows arched. “Enemies, huh? That seems…”
“Heated?” Parker supplied, and shit. Shit, shit, shit, they were getting too close to the truth.
“I’m just saying. We spend all of our time fighting each other rather than making real progress. I don’t see how we’re ever going to get anywhere.”
Charlie tilted her head in thought. “I know this is going to sound a little crazy, but have you tried just talking to her?”
“Of course,” Connor said, but Charlie lifted her non-coffee hand to stop him before he could continue.
“I’m not asking if you’ve talked at her, or if she’s talked at you. The answer to that one seems pretty clear.” Her voice softened, her eyes crinkling at the edges as she reached out to squeeze his forearm. “What I’m asking is, have you tried laying down your weapons and lowering your armor and really telling her how you feel about running the clinic?”
Connor blinked. “Well, no,” he managed. “But I don’t think it would work.”
Harlow already knew how he
wanted to run the clinic. True, he’d never really explained the why of it to her—in his defense, she’d never bothered to ask. But he wasn’t really interested in lowering his guard for a tell-all when it wouldn’t change how she felt about his methods. Even if he had been pretty hard on her ideas so far, too.
“Okay, but if it doesn’t work, you won’t be any worse off than you are now, will you?” Charlie asked, and gah, there she went, making sense again.
“I guess not,” Connor said slowly. Still. He couldn’t tell Harlow everything. Hell, he hadn’t even told his friends everything, and he trusted them more than anyone else on the planet.
Parker must’ve sensed Connor’s hesitation, because he leaned in and said, “When I first started my internship…again”—the guy made no bones about the fact that he was a take-two in the program, which made Connor respect him all the more—“I knew it was going to be really tough. Harder than the first time, even. When I realized I was going to be working with Charlie every day on top of it?”
He paused and looked at Charlie, who was nodding in agreement. “We had a lot of differences, and we fought a lot, just like you and Harlow are doing now,” Charlie said. “Our friction was obviously from our past together, so like Parker said, it’s a bit different than why you and Harlow are at odds. But I won’t lie, Connor. I remember feeling like Parker and I would never find enough common ground to be able to work together.”
“So, what happened?” Connor asked. “I mean, you guys obviously figured it out.”
Parker sat back in his chair and laughed. “We had a gigantic fight in the supply closet, of course. Total impasse. Both of us furious. It was some serious all-is-lost shit, let me tell you.”
Connor would have tried to cage his shock, but he’d always hated a losing battle. “No way. You two?”
They worked together flawlessly now. For Chrissake, Connor had seen them run back-to-back code red traumas just a couple weeks ago and they’d been practically fucking clairvoyant.
“Hand to God.” Charlie grinned. “It was awful.”
“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” Connor said, waving them both on. Jeez! “How’d you fix it?”
Parker gave up a wistful expression, then glanced at Charlie and said, “She set her frustrations aside—and I know that wasn’t easy—and she came and talked to me. No pretenses. No anger. No bullshit. It didn’t fix everything right away,” he added. “But it let us start.”
“So, that’s it?” Connor asked. “You guys just talked?”
“Yep. It’s that easy,” Charlie said.
“And that hard,” Parker tacked on. “I mean, let’s face facts. We’re dudes.” He twirled a finger between himself and Connor. “Letting loose with our feelings is not intuitive. But for stuff like this, it does work.”
Charlie nodded. “We’re living proof.”
Connor sat back and digested the conversation as Charlie and Parker started to get ready for their early shift. He might not be willing to share all of his feelings with Harlow—some of that stuff would never come out of the deep, dark places where he’d buried it because it was exactly where it belonged. But maybe if he took the chance that she’d listen, he could talk to her (and okay, fine. Listen, too) and they’d finally be able to get somewhere other than mad. Either that, or they’d have their worst argument to date and never find common ground.
But there was only one way to find out.
13
Connor stood outside the office door with a file folder in one hand and a bag full of pastries in the other. He had no fucking clue if the strategy he’d formed over the last two hours would work, but what he did know was that Charlie was right.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and he and Harlow couldn’t fix the clinic if all they did was argue.
“Good morning,” he said, making his way over the threshold and shutting the door behind him.
Harlow looked up—Jesus, those glasses were seriously going to end him one day—her gaze as businesslike as ever as she replied, “Good morning.”
Here goes nothing. Or, you know. Maybe everything. “I, ah, brought you breakfast.”
Her blue stare flickered over the bag in his hand, widening slightly before she chased her surprise with a frown. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, you know.”
Connor’s irritation flared. For Pete’s sake, it was a couple of cranberry pistachio scones and some mixed fruit. She didn’t have to be so damned defensive. But then he bit his tongue (hard) and looked past her frown to what it was covering, mentally replaying her words once, then again…
Holy shit. Could Harlow actually believe he thought she wasn’t capable?
“You hold an executive position in one of Remington’s most lucrative companies. Of course you can take care of yourself,” he said, and oh, that got her. He stepped over to his desk, although he didn’t get presumptuous enough to hand over her scone. “But I was grabbing something for myself, and I thought you might be hungry since I’m betting you’ve been here for a while.”
“Oh.” She bit her lip and eyed the bag again. “Well, I suppose a little sustenance wouldn’t hurt.”
“Please,” Connor said, unearthing a couple of napkins and a wax paper-wrapped pastry, handing over both before taking the second pastry out for himself. “A banana is a little sustenance. A plain old bagel is a little sustenance. These scones? Not even in the same ballpark.”
Harlow unwrapped her crumbly golden triangle of pure goodness and inhaled. She’d left the overhead fluorescents off in favor of the lamp on the corner of her desk, but not even the softer, golden light could mask her sudden shift in expression. “They do smell delicious.”
“They’re life-changing.” He waited for her to take a bite before following up with, “See?”
“Mmmm.” It was half reply, half pleasure, and hell if that didn’t bring him to his first order of business.
“So, I know you want to forget about…what happened between us on Friday evening,” he said, hating the fact that Harlow’s shoulders had tensed at the mention of their kiss, but proceeding nonetheless. “And I can respect that. I guess I just want to be sure you don’t feel uncomfortable working with me.”
Understanding dawned on her pretty face. “But I kissed you.”
“I kissed you back,” Connor reminded her, mentally adding not a little. “And now you regret it, so—”
“Connor, stop.” Although she’d interrupted him, her tone was soft, surprising him enough to make him clam up and listen. “I don’t regret the fact that we kissed; at least, not in the way you’re suggesting. If I hadn’t wanted it in the moment, I wouldn’t have done it. Impulsive or not.”
At that, her cheeks flushed the same shade of pink as her sweater dress. “That said, it was extremely impulsive, and that’s not in character for me, especially with a colleague. You and I work together, and we’re here to turn the clinic around. We shouldn’t lose sight of what’s important. Deal?”
“Do you ever not negotiate?” he asked, unable to help himself.
Harlow pressed a smile between her lips. “What do you think?”
Ah, hell. She had him there. “Fair enough. Speaking of which”—Connor turned his attention to the file folder he’d brought into the office, grabbing it with his non-scone hand and passing it over—“this is also for you.”
“It’s a copy of the inventory budget we were discussing on Friday,” she replied after a minute’s perusal.
“It is. I went over it and made a bunch of notes. I know the suggestions I made for cuts are a little conservative. I’m not trying to make your job difficult,” he emphasized. “But with the mess we inherited from Dr. Roper, it’s tough to know exactly which supplies we’ll really need, not to mention in what quantity, and erring on the side of caution seemed smart—at least, until we can get a more accurate idea of what an average month will really look like.”
Harlow flipped through the pages again, her brows drawn in obvious thought. �
�This is conservative,” she agreed. Her hair had fallen forward in a smooth, blond curtain as she’d tipped her head to read, and damn it, her expression was impossible to fully see, let alone interpret.
“It’s a start,” she finally finished. “I don’t think we can make it a whole month before we make some more significant changes than this, though. The mess we inherited from Roper is just as bad on the budget end.”
Connor bit down on the urge to argue. They couldn’t operate without supplies, for fuck’s sake. But they couldn’t operate without working together, either. Or, at least, trying to.
“I’m not sure where else to make cuts,” he said truthfully. “But I can emphasize efficiency with the staff, and ask the docs and interns who are volunteering to do the same when they help with training. I mean, we don’t get stingy with lap pads when someone comes into the ED with a nasty lac and we need to stop the bleeding, but we don’t exactly make water balloons out of the nitrile gloves, either. Langston would have a kitten.”
The genuine smile Harlow cracked lasted for a split second, but oh, it had been there. “Does it seem reasonable to see where we are in two weeks rather than a full month? That might placate the board a bit, even if all we’re able to give them is an update.”
“I guess, sure.” Not ideal, but he’d worked with worse.
“Great. I’ll be sure to put that in my notes for this afternoon’s meeting.”
They lapsed into silence, and Connor knew he should leave her to it. He was spending today doing hands-on training with his nurses and docs, which meant he had no less than a trillion things to prep, too. He and Harlow had made a tiny bit of progress—they’d gotten through the entire conversation without arguing, anyway. Somehow, he’d been expecting to feel different, more like she really got what he wanted to do at the clinic after they’d talked. But maybe that was what Charlie had meant by baby steps?
Between Me & You: An Enemies to Lovers Workplace Romance (Remington Medical Book 3) Page 12