“Hmm?” he moaned, all sleepy and sexy, and gah! I wasn’t equipped to deal with flirty Rowan! Not hungover, without coffee, and with stank breath.
“What… what happened last night?”
Lifting the arm that was around my waist, he brushed a piece of hair from my forehead, tucking it behind my ear. “Well, let’s see,” he said, his words strung together with humor. “From what I gathered, you and your girls got shitfaced, made a scene at a bar, went all Fight Club on the poor bouncer and got hauled in by the cops. Griff and Dex thought it would be funny to stick you in the drunk tank for a little while, where you quickly made friends with a transgender hooker.”
“LaWanda,” I whispered, memories of the night before coming back to me. “I remember her. She told me how to turn old eye shadow into lipstick. I really liked her.” Then I cringed. “So, we were arrested?”
“Nah.” He chuckled, still unbelievably close to me. The bastard’s breath didn’t smell the least bit bad. I hated him. “No one pressed charges. You triplet terrors are good.”
I breathed a sigh of relief against my palm before trying to pull back. His arm banded back around me and he tossed one of his large thighs over my legs, pinning me in place. “It’s early. Go back to sleep.”
“I can’t sleep here.”
“Why not?” he asked curiously, like he really didn’t understand why sharing a bed with him wrapped around me was a horrible idea. “And why are you covering your mouth like that?”
“Because I have Frankenstein breath,” I admitted without a care, suddenly remembering clearly why I got so drunk the night before in the first place. “And I can’t sleep here because I hate you,” I finished with a glare.
The stupid jerk’s grin grew even bigger. “You don’t hate me.”
Okay, that pissed me off so I uncovered my mouth, hoping my breath would make him pass out. “Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t. You want to, but I make it too hard.”
My body froze as his words replayed in my achy head. I’d thought that exact same statement countless times since last night. It was as if he’d read my mind.
“Get off me,” I grunted as I shoved at him. It was like trying to shove at a brick wall.
“Navie…”
“I said get off!” I seethed. Then I blew in his face. It wasn’t the most mature thing in the world—to be honest, it was quite disgusting—but Rowan had a gift for bringing out the worst in me.
“Oh, dear Lord,” he choked as he jerked away. “That’s awful.” I took advantage of the distraction and hurried to scoot away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough.
“Let go, Rowan!” I struggled through the pain radiating in my head. The need to escape was much stronger.
“Will you just listen?” he asked in exasperation as he pinned my back to the bed, hovering over me. I opened my mouth to give him another waft of awful, but his hand clamped over it, foiling my plan. “Please, Navie.”
“Mmph mmmhmm phmmm phummfm,” I mumbled against his palm.
“If I move my hand, you promise not to breathe on me?”
I glared.
“Ah, fuck it.” He sighed, moving his hand anyway. “What did you say?”
“I said I don’t want to hear your explanation,” I spit out, masking the hurt in my chest with anger so he wouldn’t know how deeply it had stung to see him with that woman.
“I wasn’t going to explain. I wasn’t going to make excuses. I just want to apologize.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. All I could do was lie there silently as I stared up into his icy gaze, trying not to let my emotions sweep me away.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a hushed voice.
“For what?” I croaked, needing to hear him admit to exactly what he’d done.
“For yesterday.” That was a little too vague for my liking. I was about to say as much, but he continued. “I was an asshole. I wanted to make you jealous, and I used that photographer to try and do it.”
If I hadn’t been lying down—well, pinned down—you could have knocked me over with a feather. I never thought Rowan Locklaine would apologize for his bad behavior. It went against everything I’d thought of him when we first started working together. But there was the problem. I saw different sides to the man I’d started off hating the longer I was around him. There were layers to Rowan that I never expected. It was those sides that made it impossible not to like him as I came to know him. It was those sides that had me scared to death, because I was feeling so much more for him than I should, than was safe. I was going to get hurt; there was no doubt about it, no matter how hard I fought to avoid it.
And I was so tired of being hurt. It sometimes felt like my entire life was just one painful thing after another. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle anything else. I was so much stronger than I used to be, but that broken, sad girl still lay deep beneath my surface. She was always with me, just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“You wanted to hurt me?” I asked against the lump forming in my throat.
“No! God, Navie, I’m so damn sorry. It was so fucking stupid. I thought if I used her to make you jealous, you’d get…I don’t know, territorial or something.”
“So, you wanted me to get pissed off and, what? Pee on you like a dog or something? Good Lord, Rowan. Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound right now?”
“The moment you walked out the door, I knew I’d fucked up royally. I never had any interest in her—”
I didn’t want to let myself believe him. It felt too much like throwing in the towel. “You really expect me to believe you didn’t want to sleep with her? I’m not blind. I saw how gorgeous she was.”
“You’re gorgeous.”
Angry butterflies rioted in my stomach. I felt myself growing weak and needed to do something to maintain the upper hand. With a snarky smile, I responded, “Nice line. Tell me, do you always feel the need to butter up the women you want to fuck with shallow compliments?” It was at that very moment I knew I’d gone too far.
His pale eyes grew dark and angry. The muscle in his jaw ticked as he stared me down. “Despite your flattering opinion of me, I don’t just go around the city sticking my dick in every willing woman. I don’t lie, I don’t give false hopes. I’m honest with the women I take to bed. I let them know up front that I’m not looking for anything other than a quick fuck. That isn’t what I want from you.” Clenching his eyes shut, he pulled in a deep breath before opening them once again and staring down at me intensely, like he was searching for patience. “I’m not some asshole who’s going to pursue one woman while he’s banging a handful of others. If I’m interested in a woman, whether it’s only for one night or more, she’s the only one I plan on fucking.”
I inhaled a shaky breath. “B-but, you’re not… we’re not…” I couldn’t finish that sentence for some reason.
“I’m well aware,” he responded sarcastically. “And you can’t imagine the pain a month and a half long case of blue balls can cause.”
My eyes bugged out at his admission. He hadn’t slept with anyone since… I did a quick calculation in my head. He hadn’t had sex since I started working for him. That girl on my first day had to have been the last. And just like that, he’d revealed another layer of himself.
“You hurt my feelings,” I whispered, speaking the words before giving them any thought.
His head lowered and he trailed his nose along my jaw. “I know. And you can’t imagine how much I regret that I did. I’m an idiot, Navie, but I swear to God, if you give me a fucking shot, I’ll make it right. I’ll make it good between us.”
Oh, the feels. Things were beginning to get too intense. The mood needed to be lightened. “You won’t try and make me jealous again?” I asked with a forced laugh. “Well, that’s good to know. I wouldn’t want to have to kick you in the nuts.”
He lifted his head and smiled at me. “No. I promise not to hurt you again.”
My own smile van
ished and I had to blink the back tears that suddenly burned the backs of my eyes. “You can’t make that promise, Rowan. No one can. If I’ve learned anything in my life, it’s that pain is inevitable.”
His gaze warmed as it flicked over my face. The pity I saw in those ice-blue depths was like a punch to the throat. “I can’t say that you’re wrong,” he said. “I’m just sorry you’ve ever had to deal with it.”
I cleared my throat awkwardly and gave him a small shrug. “It’s part of life, right?” The grin on my lips felt tight…fake. “Can we… can we maybe start over?”
“What do you mean?”
“Can we maybe… be friends?” I asked hesitantly, aware that it wasn’t what he wanted, but knowing I wasn’t capable of giving more. At least not with him.
Rowan’s forehead fell to my shoulder as he let out a deep sigh. “You really want to be friends?” He said the word like it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“I really do,” I replied softly. “It’s all I can offer, Rowan. I’m sorry.”
Pulling a deep breath in through his nose, he sat up and ran a hand through his rumpled hair. It felt like an eternity passed before he finally spoke. “All right. I can do friends.”
I sucked in a breath of sweet relief as he stood to leave the room. It wasn’t until I caught sight of Rowan wearing nothing more than a black pair of boxer briefs that I realized I was wearing something completely different than I had been the previous night. Looking down, I noticed I was wearing a t-shirt so big I was swimming in it, my panties, and… nothing else.
“Uh, Rowan? What happened to my clothes?” He looked over his shoulder and gave me a devilish smirk before walking out the door. If that smirk hadn’t gotten me all hot and bothered, I totally would have chased after him so I could blow in his face again.
Friends.
Fucking friends.
Well, if that wasn’t a kick in the balls, I didn’t know what was. Hell had frozen over. I’d officially been friend-zoned for the first time in my life. But I’d give her what she wanted. I’d be her friend. I’d be the best damn friend she ever had.
Then I’d go in for the kill.
Then I’d get what I wanted.
Since that strange morning when I woke up in Rowan’s bed, things seemed to have gone back to normal. Well, normal-ish. I didn’t think anything about our interactions would be considered normal to the outside world, but it worked for us. He was still an unbending asshole most of the time. I was still a smartass whenever the opportunity arose. And with him being an unbending asshole, the opportunity arose a lot. But there was one major shift between us that I found myself enjoying more than I should have. We laughed. All the time. We made jokes, we teased, we pushed each other’s buttons. And it was fun. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so much with a man. It was as if we understood each other on a deeper level, in a way I refused to let myself overanalyze.
He still touched me whenever there was a chance. Those touches could have still been considered less than professional, but I didn’t have it in me to fight any longer. I didn’t want to. I was skating a very slippery slope, craving those touches like a junky craved their next fix. My body reacted to everything about Rowan. His voice, his presence, his smell. There wasn’t one thing about him that didn’t turn me on in some way. I was in Hell, but damn if I wasn’t absolutely loving every minute of it.
The only downside was, in the evenings when I had to go home and give myself the talk. I spent an hour every night, standing in front of my mirror, reminding myself not to look too hard, feel too much. I had to keep my guard up. I had to be strong, because when that hurt came… and it most definitely would, I needed to be prepared. My life had never been easy. And I’d have been the most stupid of fools to forget that. I went to bed every single night telling myself that Rowan Locklaine hurting me eventually would not break me. But the fear was always there, buried down deep where I could ignore it whenever I chose to.
But I was tough. I could handle it. If I just kept telling myself that, it would eventually become the truth… right?
It had to.
“What are you doing?”
“Jesus, Rowan!” I yelped, my entire body jolting, nearly sending my laptop crashing onto the floor. He was right there, leaning over the arm of the couch behind me, his handsome face only an inch or two away from me. And I hadn’t heard him coming. “You scared the shit outta me!”
“Sorry.” He chuckled with a grin that said he was anything but sorry. Before standing to his full height and moving around the couch, he leaned in to plant a kiss on the tip of my nose. That was another development in the week that had followed waking up in his bed. Rowan’s lips seemed to find themselves on my body at least three times a week. For the most part, the pecks were somewhat platonic, but that didn’t stop my body from damn near overheating every single time he did it.
“So, what are you doing?” His large frame plopped down onto the other end of the couch, causing me to bounce. Before I had a chance to bend my knees to move my feet out of the way, his long fingers wrapped around my ankles, pulling my feet onto his lap like it was the most casual, normal thing in the world.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” I responded snidely, trying to camouflage the fact that my heart felt like it was about to beat right out of my chest. A smart woman would have yanked her feet back, creating much-needed space. But smart flew right out the damn window when it came to Rowan. “I’m working. Something you should be doing. Or is your book going to write itself?”
“Needed to take a break. I wouldn’t want to exhaust my creative genius, now, would I?”
“Hmmm,” I mumbled noncommittally before adding in a sarcastic, “Sure.”
“You know, maybe you wouldn’t be such a smartass if you just read my books. Then you’d understand what all the hype’s about.”
Focusing my unseeing gaze on the computer screen, I tried my hardest to keep from giggling as I responded with a casual, “Not my taste, sorry.” It was so hard not to laugh every time we fell into that particular discussion. My unwillingness to read anything other than my go-to genres—romance, romance, and more romance—irked Rowan like you wouldn’t believe. And I loved mashing at those buttons, watching him briefly lose it. I’d lost count of how many times we’d argued over my refusal to read his murder/mystery series.
“Jesus, you’re such a girl,” he said with an annoyed grumble.
“So kind of you to notice,” I deadpanned, eyes still on my work.
“Oh, I definitely noticed,” he said with a low, deep rasp.
Making the conscious effort to ignore the sultry tone of his voice, I pushed forth with my typical smartass attitude. The combination of his tone, the way he was still touching me, and the fluttering in my belly at the easy way we were with each other was sensory overload, and I needed to put a stop to it before I melted into his comfy sofa. “Besides,” I started, switching gears in order to shift the mood in the room. “I heard those books were sooo boring. Why waste my time?”
Those crystal-clear, blue eyes narrowed on mine just as his agile fingers prodded at the soles of my feet. “Agh! Stop!” I screamed as he continued to tickle me, writhing around on the couch, trying to get away, holding on to my laptop the best I could. “Stop! Stop! I’m sorry!” I cackled and snorted, failing to break his hold on me.
“You take it back?”
“I take it back! I take it back!” I giggled maniacally. “I was just kidding!” Finally, thank God, he stopped and I was able to suck in a much needed breath as my laughter died down.
The minutes bled together as we fell into a comfortable silence, my eyes refocused on my work as Rowan’s focus rested on the TV screen. I wasn’t sure how long had passed before his deep voice broke through the silence.
“What the hell are you watching?”
I looked up at the TV and back to him. “Chrisley Knows Best.”
He studied the show for a few more seconds, his midnight brows pul
led together in a furrow. “Why’s that gay dude feeling up on that woman?”
“Todd Chrisley’s not gay!”
“Oh, babe,” he laughed. “He’s totally gay.”
“He is not! That’s his wife. And those are his kids. See?” I flailed my arm at the screen. “He’s so not gay.”
Rowan turned to me, his expression one a grown-up would use on a naïve child. “Any man who uses the term ‘retweet’ out loud is gay. Sorry to burst your bubble, but that woman’s his beard.”
“Stop ruining reality TV for me, ass-face! Don’t you have a boring-ass book to write?”
He glared at me as I burrowed back behind my computer. “You really don’t want to stay employed, do you? First rule of being a personal assistant is you don’t shit on your boss’s work.”
I smiled sweetly. “I’d never shit on Lauren’s work. I think she’s fabulous.”
That earned me another chuckle as we fell back into our routine, me working, Rowan pointing out every single thing that could possibly prove the man on TV to be gay. I refused to believe it.
As I scrolled through Rowan’s emails, responding or deleting as necessary, something caught my eye. “Hey, who’s Bree Vincent?” The moment the question passed my lips, Rowan’s entire frame locked up tight.
All humor had fled his features as he looked at me, and I felt a chill race up my spine from the ice in his gaze. The warmth disappeared, replaced by the frigid cold I hadn’t seen since the first weeks of us working together.
“What did you say?”
“Uh… Bree Vincent?” I repeated hesitantly. “There’s, like, six emails from her in the past two days.” I tried for a lighthearted laugh as I asked, “She a crazy stalker fan or something?” but it fell flat.
“Or something,” he responded in a low, menacing voice as he removed my feet from his lap and stood from the couch. “Delete them,” he demanded as he started from the living room.
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